The need for hand sanitizer

I have never been a sickly person. I grew up in a smoking household, so I got my fair share of sinus infections, and colds, had my tonsils out when I was 8 years old and of course had tubes put in my ears as a baby. Other than those listed, I have never been sick very often. Until I started this new part time job at the bank. In the last six months I have been sick three different occasions, and each illness lasted for two or more weeks. I had two really bad colds, got a staph infection on my toe, and now I have contracted pink eye.

I haven't had pink eye in a long time and did not remember how much it hurts.
Let me tell you now, it hurts like hell, and I am talking Dante's Inferno type hell.

Brad and I had our anniversary yesterday and celebrated over the weekend by going to the movies and dinner by ourselves Saturday night. My eye had been red all morning Saturday and one of the girls that I was working with even said it looked like pink eye. I told her, "No, it doesn't hurt, I think it is just an infection from my contacts." So much for my keen sense of intelligence. That afternoon, Brad and I were sitting in the movie theatre watching Valkyrie (which is VERY good by the way) and my eye started tearing up, tears were pouring down my cheeks. Thankfully it was dark and no one could see my eye dripping. We went on to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, which is also darkly lit. We ate dinner, and my eye stopped dripping. As soon as we got into the car to ride home, the pain set in. It felt as though there was a piece of sandpaper stuck onto the inside of my eyelid. Every time I blinked, my eye would pull inward and the pain would make me flinch. We stopped at a drugstore to get over the counter drops because I wasn't about to go to an after hours clinic with all of the drug addicts in this town and pick up another bacteria. I went to sleep with my eye still oozing and hurting, but not too severe.

Sunday morning I woke up in misery. My eye was swollen completely shut, my nose was stopped up and my throat was sore. I told Brad that I would be making it to church and asked for a cold wash cloth and some Aleve. Then I fell asleep for three more hours waking up at 11:00 which is a miracle in itself. Finally around 2:00 I gave in and called our family doctor who by the Grace of God called in a prescription of antibiotic drops for me. They helped but not enough. I am finally feeling better today and had to go to work yesterday with pink eye because the stupid people there are just, well, stupid and wouldn't let me go home. So, in a very non Christian like way, I hope that they all get pink eye and walk through the inferno as I had to, only maybe they will get scars on their feet from the coals. I don't like ignorance, in fact I detest it, and that is a very bad fault of mine. I am working on it.

I have come to the conclusion that all of these years I have been working in a very clean corporate atmosphere with professionals who were also clean people. I am also OCD when it comes to germs, and am a frequent handwasher. Just ask the lady that used to manicure my fingernails when I had the money to get them done on a regular basis. The skin on my hands is as dry as a piece of paper. Now that I work in a branch as a teller and have to deal with the general public two and a half days a week, and count their gross money that has been Lord only knows where, I am getting sick more often. I can't wash my hands after every customer, I can't even use my wet wipes or sanitizer after every customer. My immune system is just not what I thought it was. It has disappointed me but I am sure that it will rebound soon. Until then, I have to stay well! I can't take care of these three boys (Brad included) in my life when I am sick all of the time.

Well, now that my rant is over I am going to go and make Brad and Tucker a lunch for tomorrow. Speaking of jobs, I have to say that a mommy never gets a day off, and her job is much more like a 20 hour shift than an 8 hour shift. There is no monetary payment given to a mom for her time or her talents. However, there is one thing that I am certain of and it is this: There is no greater job than being a mom, who is blessed with the ability to stay at home with her children even if it is only three days a week. I would not trade all of the money in (France? US doesn't have any so don't want theirs) for what I get to do every day. I have waited 6 long years to be able to wake up in the morning and play with my child during the early morning hours, eat lunch with him at our table in the kitchen, (even if it is a lean pocket and chips and not an extravagant lunch out) and then be able to hold him in my arms until he falls asleep for his nap during the day. I am only sad that I was not able to do this with Tucker. But the 5 years that I got to have him all to myself makes up for the additional time at home that I get to spend with Connor now. I hope that every stay at home mom that I know realizes how very lucky, no change that, BLESSED we are to be able to be with our children every day.

I look back on all of those days that I had to take Tucker to daycare in the morning, waking him up early, rushing around the house, shoving food in a bag for his teachers to feed him when we got there, and walking down the hall listening to him crying because I was leaving him all the while knowing that I had no choice but to keep walking. That is what I did, I kept walking, and praying that someday, it wouldn't have to be that way anymore. Beth Moore said something in a Bible study that I was in this morning that really hit home. I can't remember it verbatim, but it went something like this, "God has a purpose for each of us. We don't know what that purpose is, sometimes things do not go the way that we plan for them to go. We don't always get what we pray for when we pray for it, because it all falls into His plan and His purpose for us. Not ours." I will never fully understand why things happen the way that they do, but I believe in God's Promise to me that he will always love me, take care of me, and be here for me when ever I need Him. For right now, that is all I need. Thank you God, for my life, and all you have blessed me with!