Holding pattern

Around Christmas the youngest kids were fighting a virus that left them feverish, lethargic, and coughing. "My eyes hurt," said poor Stella on Christmas night. She was sick enough that she and I didn't make the trip to the grandparents' house the next day. Last night after we got home from our trip to the other grandparents' house I found myself weirdly achy and chilled. Was it just the 7-hour car trip and the return to our chilly house? I hopped in the shower to try to warm up, and found myself crying over a possibility too preposterous to record. (Do you do that too-- imagine improbable worst-case scenarios when you're sick? It's like getting sick incapacitates the part of my brain that would normally keep the nonsense in check.)

Today I am also feverish, lethargic, and coughing. "My eyes hurt," I said this morning. I am optimistic that another quiet day will bring me most of the way back to normal, but I've been pretty subdued today.

I was going to start another round of the Whole 30 on New Year's Day, but we stopped at the Waffle House and I said, "Hmm, I'll start tomorrow." Today, it turns out, was a comfort-eating kind of day. We'll see about tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure there are no Whole-30-compliant cough drops in existence.

This might be a good year for Epiphany resolutions.

**

'Tis the season for predictable blogging angst. I started this blog with the specific goal of maintaining a site I could share in a Christmas letter-- not too personal, not too navel-gaze-y, just a happy record of family life and funny kid sayings. It turns out, however, that I am put together as a navel-gaze-y kind of person. Give me a channel in which to broadcast a summary of observations from my navel, and I will do so. So every year since 2007 I've gone through the same sequence of thoughts:

1. Should I put the blog in the Christmas letter? It's so navel-gaze-y.
2. Yes, I will put the blog in the Christmas letter. People don't have to read it if they don't like it.
3. I should write some cheerful soccer mom posts, to disguise the true navel-gaze-y nature of the blog.
4. Except it's December, and I am never cheerful in December and also it's not soccer season so am I even a soccer mom?
5. OH AND ALSO it's December and we're visiting extended family, and I am having SO MANY THOUGHTS about the complexities of extended family relationships.
6. I cannot really post about those relationships in a soccer-mom Christmas-letter kind of blog. AND YET how can I process them if I don't blog about them?
7. Maybe I shouldn't put the blog in the Christmas letter next year.

Oh, goodness, it has taken me longer than expected to squeeze this blog post out of my virus-addled brain. Time to slurp down the last of my tea with honey in hopes of keeping the coughing at bay overnight.