Days Like Today...

You just gotta get out of em! :-)

This morning at 5am I woke up to my daughter's voice whimpering that her ear hurt. She sounded so pitiful. I pulled myself from sleep, and then scrounged through our bin of medical supplies to find my ear infection detection device. (Best investment I have ever made! It's not been wrong yet!) Celeste sits still while I check her ear, and sure enough, it registers a blaring 5! on the reader. That's the highest it reads. I check it two more times just to be sure, feel her head (no fever), and then give her a small dose of Motrin to help with the pain and hopefully help her sleep for a few more hours. We both crawl back into my bed. Within minutes she is sleeping soundly, and there I am lying wide awake-worrying. The questions begin....

Do I take her to the doctor first thing this morning? That's expensive. Maybe I should take her to a Kroger or CVS clinic like I did with Caed in Nashville. Wait. I don't know that there is one here. Better take her to the doctor so I don't waste ALL DAY trying to find a place to get her taken care of. Maybe it's not that bad, and I should let her wait it out? BUT, she already has failed a hearing test in that ear, and I don't want any sort of infection lingering in there to increase any problems she "might" be having with hearing in that ear. Okay, if I arrive at the doctor's office at 8 without an appointment, will they be able to see me before I meet our landlord with a rent check by 10? Will that give me time to run over and get an antibiotic filled before I head down to meet him?

Well, you get the point. I didn't go back to sleep. At 6, Caleb's alarm went off, and I slowly got up also. A few minutes later the power goes out. I was so thankful that the coffee had mostly brewed. The power was out for about an hour and a half and the temperature was dropping rapidly in the house because of how cold it was outside! I woke both the kids up to get them dressed in warmer clothes before it got to chilly inside the house. I packed some breakfast to go for the kids, the power clicked back on, and we headed out the door to the doctors office.

Fortunately, the doctor's visit was quick. However, what was intended to be an appointment for Celeste's ear ended up being a lot more than that! Her ear was indeed coming down with infection, but her throat was blaring red. The nurse tested her for strep-and, wham, bam-positive! Consequently, I'm automatically upgraded to paying for 2 doctor's appointments since I had Caed with me and they looked in his throat when they discovered Celeste had strep. They also went ahead and did a swab of his throat-negative. BUT, we are still prescribed with antibiotics for Celeste, Caed, and me because we would probably all get it anyway. Caleb's is getting called in tomorrow. I'm thinking..."If you are going to just give us all antibiotics anyway, Why in the world would you swab my son, and by so doing, automatically DOUBLE the amount of money I owe to someone out there...!!" I had to pay $100 dollars for a sick child visit for Celeste plus $74 dollars for a swab of her throat. And, essentially, them looking into Caed's throat cost $100 dollars because he became a second patient at that point. Really people? Then, $74 more for his NEGATIVE swab.

Driving down to meet the landlord to give him rent money because our electronic bill payment hadn't reached him for the second time in a row, which had caused me to spend literally 2 hours on the phone with banking customer service/automated voice machines the day before,the thought hit me about how overwhelming a lot of things seemed in my life at the moment. It was then that the Holy Spirit gently reminded me that taking care of me and my family is ultimately God's responsibility. It gave me great peace to be reminded that no matter what the circumstances are that God has promised to take care of his children. So, I don't have to worry!!

"Attitude check?" Praise the Lord!! :-) I do have a lot to be grateful for. I am very happy with the decision to take Celeste early this morning to the doctors office. I'm glad that we won't be miserable with sore throats over the weekend, and that overall our plans weren't ruined for the day. I'm glad that this money actually went toward our deductible at the beginning of a new year!

We have a lot on our plate over the next several months. We are adjusting to one income, implementing a stricter budget since we've seen our savings plummet drastically since our move, researching homes to purchase, planning for a third child if the Lord wills it in the near future, and wondering about putting Celeste into dance classes. And, since I don't have to worry about all of these things, I'm going to be excited about them!! And yes, being on a strict budget thus far has actually been exciting and rewarding.

That's enough of an update for now. It is more likely rather an unloading of my brain on to paper than an "update," so I will probably benefit from this far more than anyone reading, but thanks for muddling through it anyway!