You know what?  These last two weeks or so have pretty much sucked.  Christmas and Christmas Eve celebrations have been the only bright spots in an otherwise ugly period of time.

First I got sick with what was probably the flu.  Immediately after that, my wife got sick with what appeared to be the same bug.  We still had a lot of Christmas shopping and prepping to go but we spent most of the week prior to the holiday in a nyquil induced haze of uselessness.  Entire days were spent in bed trying to sleep through the illnesses.

Near the end of last week Jen started improving.  A day or so later I started to slowly improve.  We scrambled through the end of the Christmas shopping, and started getting ready for the Christmas Eve party, but for the most part it was just a struggle to keep ourselves up and at ’em.  Once I started to feel a tiny bit better, Jen started feeling worse.  Oh great.  Christmas Eve came and she fought her way through the cooking and hosting like a trooper.  Christmas day she did the same, all while getting sicker and sicker.  We both felt like Santa was at less than his best this year.  Jen took care of all of it, and I am dazzled by the success she had, but I feel like I could have been more helpful, and if we hadn’t lost that week to the flu we could have made some of the kids’ last minute gift wishes come true.  That was a big part of the problem this year, the kids took their sweet time putting together a wish list and in the end my step son was still asking for things as late as 12/23, and then come Christmas morning he was expecting to get those things.  He tried to act like he wasn’t disappointed, but we could tell he was a little bit.  Next year I need to do a better job getting a list to Santa out of them both as early as humanly possible.  I might have them start taking notes on ideas for next year, tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas was a big success.  Everyone was happy.  I just feel like I should have contributed more, and I failed to surprise Jen at all.  She got great stuff.  It’s just that everything she got was on her wish list.  I didn’t manage to wow her with anything.  As for the kids, the last paragraph makes it sound like they got socks and underwear and nothing else.  That’s not true.  They got new iPads!  They got awesome games.  They got books that they are going to love.  They got a lot of great stuff.  I just wanted to do better by them and I couldn’t because I spent the week leading up to Christmas as a flu riddled basket case.

So maybe you’re asking, this is all in the past.  Why is that fat red head saying that he’s still having a bad week?  Well for me, New Years is ruined because of work.  I’m on call all day, and they are guaranteed to work my fat ass off all day and night.  It’s going to suck.  I still have a lingering cold and cough.  Not bad, but it is still there.  As for Jen?  Oh nothing.  Just fricken walking pneumonia, that’s all.  She kept getting sicker so she went to the doctor yesterday and got the news.  Pneumonia!  Are you serious?  How bad does that suck!  She feels really sick and she is just miserable about it.  I feel miserable because I’m here at work and not at home rubbing her feet and cooking her some Campbell Chicken Noodle Soup.  I should be home with her right now, but instead I am here working.  I hate it.

So what it comes down to is this.  This week and last week have sucked in many ways.  I am hopeful that things will start turning around soon, but the next few days still may be a continuance of the current suck fest.

Send some get well wishes to my beautiful bride.  She’s an angel and she needs to feel better soon.