Thunderstorms....

Yesterday morning I woke to a raging thunderstorm complete with hail. It was a dubious way to start the morning and seemed to be a foreshadowing of the day ahead. My cold had started moving to my chest the day before, and I was beginning to cough. For some people coughing is an annoyance, for me coughing is something to be avoided at all cost. I had hoped I had nipped it in the bud the day before by taking to the couch and minimizing my activity, but I was still coughing when I woke up, so I was immediately frustrated.

My youngest daughter had a particularly rough, emotional weekend capped off by a high fever and swollen throat. I was finding it difficult to be far away from her when she was in pain. In my heart, I knew she was well equipped to handle everything she was going through on her own, but I just wasn't ready to "not" be in a position to make things better. So when she asked me to call her at 9 AM to wake her for a Doctor's appointment because her alarm hadn't been working correctly, I thought to myself, at least this was one thing I could help her with. So at 9 AM on the dot, I dialed her number, only for it to go unanswered. Hmmm...she must be sleeping pretty hard. I tried again, still no answer. Maybe she was up already and in the shower. I'd wait a few more minutes and try again. This continued for 25 more minutes and then my worry button started going off. Maybe something was wrong! I couldn't reach her suite mates, but I wasn't worried enough to call in the cavalry just yet. I would just have to wait for her to check in.

In the midst of trying to roust Chelsey, my oldest daughter called. She had stayed in town with a friend and had woken up with a fever as well. Apparently she had either finally caught the cold/virus her Dad and I had brought home from the boat or else was having sympathy fevers for her sister. Either way, she was trying to decide if she should increase her seizure meds, because she was feeling so poorly. Never a good question to hear first thing Monday morning.

After I hung up the phone with Charlie and had a gameplan in place for her meds and her path home, I once again set out trying to track down Chelsey. About 9:45 I finally get a call from her, she had slept through all ten of my phone calls. She had a hard time sleeping the night before and finally fell into a deep sleep early in the morning. She was able to reschedule her appointment for later in the morning, but she was still running a fever for the third day in a row which didn't bode well for her mood or mine.

I hung up the phone relieved that Chelsey was alive, but still feeling pretty stressed. I returned to my work, and tried to distract myself with my e-mail, but as any typical Monday morning, the e-mail was really just highlighting more problems. Fortunately, it was not too long before my "Walk" alarm on my outlook went off. It was still pretty nasty outside, and with my cough plaguing my morning, I thought better of walking around the building. Hmmm, what would be a good stand in without taxing my lungs too much. I plopped down on the floor and decided I would do a round of crunches. My first thought was, "Wow, I'm getting old and creaky! This is a really hard floor and it is hurting my back just to lay here, much less what it will feel like to try and contort my body into a sit-up!" but I sucked it up and started to crunch.

A surprising thing happened, as I pushed through the crunches, I started transferring my frustration into my efforts, and as I crunched away, I also seemed to push the stress away. By the end of my reps, I was actually beginning to feel better. The frustration, while not gone, was greatly reduced. I hopped back up in my chair and thought to myself what a handy trick that was! And then the phone rang again. As I glanced at the caller ID and saw my daughter's name yet again, I had a fleeting thought that I was going to get a really tough AB work-out today. I already had a feeling I would need to do a few more crunches by the end of the conversation.