This has been an odd weekend.  It involved illness (on the part of me and Sam), sleep, reading, an impromptu trip to the doctor, and a nasty taste in my mouth from the antibiotics.  It involved my parents really coming to the rescue – babysitting MrMan, delivering orange juice and other healing foods, cajoling us into going and then driving us to the doctor, letting us lounge and sleep on their couches.  And suddenly, it was 8 pm and MrMan was asking for a cheese sandwich, at home.  (That boy loves him a cheese sandwich, for breakfast, lunch, or dinner – mayonnaise, the very important mustard, and whatever cheese we have.  I suspect he views it as a vehicle for eating mustard.  This morning, I scrambled eggs and offered jam on his toast.  But he chose mustard.)

My mom even arranged for one of her students to come cut our grass, since it hadn’t been cut for two weeks, which, woefully, is far too long in the summer months.  Coincidentally, our downstairs neighbor, who hasn’t been around in months, chose this morning to do some weed-whacking as well.  He butchered his azaleas in the process.  He offered to do ours.  I tactfully declined.

Mostly it was nice having a reason not to rise to the occasion.  We were too tired.  Sam more so.  He’s basically been in bed for four days, since we returned from Chicago.  And now that I’m on drugs and feeling better, the anxiety I was feeling going into the weekend is gone.  I have barely two weeks to get a grant together and I was stressing out about my lack of energy toward it.  But I even did a little reading for it early this morning.

My experience of the weekend makes me wonder how other people do it.  I was by no means seriously ill, but probably would be by this point if my parents hadn’t stepped in to help.  For which I am so very grateful.  Not just that they were so willing to sacrifice so much of their weekend for us.  But that we live close enough for them to do so.  My ponderings about how long we will stay in New Orleans continue.

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