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When I was in the hospital, the Neuro PA wanted to send me home after one night. He said that the best thing he can do for his  patients is to send them home so they can recover in their own beds. Obviously he has no inkling of what my house is like and knowing better, I convinced him that one more night would be better for my healing process. I wanted to plead "please don't send me home today.", but that may appear too desperate.  The truth is, I like my home. I do. I love how the sunbeams shoot through the blinds in the morning. I love reading on the daybed that is in front of the fireplace. But, what I love more is having my own room with a single mattress so no one can sneak in bed with me in the middle of the night. I like having a TV to watch crap, not cartoons, and have someone bring me my meals. I like people asking me if I need anything. I like having no expectations placed upon me except to rest, relax and heal. I am so used to chaos and crumbs, that the hospital is a glorious place to be. When I go home, there will be kids. Three in fact. 

R. and I have discussed it numerous times and we agree that kids are probably the most destructive thing to a house. Yes, animals can be destructive but you can train them to not pee in the house or put them in  a crate when you leave. A natural disaster, when it hits, is bad. Real bad. It can wipe out a whole house, let alone a neighborhood, in minutes. But kids, those wackos, can destroy things on a much grander scale with minimal detection. A kid can mess up a wall with stickers or sticky hands in a matter of seconds. Depending on their location and method used, the destruction to the wall could go unnoticed for a while. Add a second kid to mix and the destruction is exponentially worse. Add a third kid or more, and you are screwed. Just plain screwed.  At times, they like to all work together, increasing the amount of damage to one area. A good example is a group of them teaming up to dig a big hole in the middle of your yard just because. Other times they like to work on their own. Spilled milk here, taking all the clothes out of a dresser there, and a grand toothpaste explosion in the bathroom to top off a beautiful trifecta. Three separate disasters can be accomplished in less than 10 seconds, yet cause over 10 minutes of work (this is a very conservative estimate). But wait, what are they doing while you clean up the milk, clothes and toothpaste? Do you walk away to check, knowing that the clean up job is half done, and they are more than likely destroying something else with all this unsupervised time you gave them. Or do you focus on the mess in front of you, knowing you are getting at least one thing accomplished in your day for goodness sake, and hope they are quiet because they are all playing nice together and plan on cleaning up all their toys afterwards.

We anticipated a large amount of distruction while I am recovering.  Therefore, being smart people, fueled by caffeine and some anxiety, we super-dooper-crazy-lady cleaned our house before I set foot in the hospital. We debulked the kid's toys and clothes. We did all of the laundry we possible could without rewashing clean clothes. We purchased home supplies for me like a grabber, long handle shoe horn (which B calls my "hooker") and an elevated toilet seat. We swept, scrubbed and washed just about every surface possible. We arranged for family to come the weeks R. works. We were awesome and as prepared as we could be. Everything was falling into place. 

Yet, in life there is always something, right?  Great stories of life always have twists in the plot that are unexpected. We thought back surgery was our challenge this season. We were wrong. Oh, so wrong. The challenge is a GI bug that is picking off the kids in our house one by one while I am recovering from surgery. Often when things go wrong, we are tempted to cry. Why me God? Can I just get a break? Thankfully we quickly pole vaulted over self pity and pleading, and we now have a case of the equally contagious giggles. Our journey these past few days is SO ridiculous that it is funny. With every puke attack I laugh. Poor husband who has a daunting job of running the house without his wife's help, gets to also take on unexpected bursts of body fluid from the little people who have taken over his home. 

But as usual, it could be worse. At least it isn't pink eye or lice. At least we have Netflix. At least we have awesome friends who are sleeping over to help us out. At least my chocolate supply is still strong. At least we have a sense of humor.