The countdown has begun...

I don't know what the deal is, but the sickness has descended upon the Whitman house. It is not as bad as it could be, though. No stomach issues - to me that is the worst. We have had someone in some stage of illness for two full weeks now. Jack and Jeremy were sick the week before we went to Tennessee for our early Christmas there. Then the morning we left to come back to Kentucky, I woke up with a sore throat. This turned out to be the sorest throat I have probably had in my entire life...and I used to have strep throat about once a year. In third grade I had it and since I knew that the "cure" was a penicillin shot, I decided not to tell my parents. I went to school with a majorly sore throat and a fever for days all to avoid a needle! People who used to know my aversion to needles should be amazed that I have had children. Anyway, Jack's production of green snot has slowed down considerably. Madalynn wakes up kind of yucky, I think mainly because she is so stopped up that she has breathed through her nose all night and it makes her throat sore. Jeremy and I, strangely, feel terrible in the mornings and at night. We feel pretty good during the day, but towards bedtime here comes the stuffiness and sore throats. I am grateful it isn't worse, but I am ready to be better.

We are supposed to go out of town this weekend. We are just going to the Smoky Mountains, but I am looking forward to having him all to myself regardless. We hope to see some movies and I hope to get some sleep. He can watch sports on TV! We only have a few short weeks before breeding season. That's the hardest time of year, every year, for ALL of us. Jeremy's job is like a pressure cooker. No one really understands how much pressure he is under. Wealthy farm owners and horses worth at the very least 10's of thousands if not millions, farm managers that have to make sure they do all in their power to make the farm owners happy, the threat of lawsuits if things don't please someone, and trying to hold on to clients that might be looking for any excuse to hire a cheaper vet; all this while the economy is in the toilet and profits have decreased dramatically. Who wouldn't be stressed?

He and I have had moments of closeness lately though. We went to lunch at Red Robin a couple of weeks ago. It was his idea to get his grandparents to keep the kids here while we got away. Since I got this laptop, I have tried to hang out downstairs with him more. I feel so encouraged that maybe he thinks about trying to make time for us.