A Utah Family Travel Writer's Adventures with Altitude
I don’t believe in reincarnation but like to tease my kids how good they have it.
Me: “In my next life, I’m coming back as Bode.”
Him: “You can’t do dat!”
Me: “Why not?”
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| Reading to captive audience Fat Kitty |
I then waited for the kid’s doctrinal profundities on how it wasn’t even possible. It didn’t happen because he countered with this reason:
Him: “YOU CAN’T EVEN PLAY WII!”
We’re a family of contrasts.
Jamie obsessively clips his nails and for a while, Bode followed suit.
Though I usually suffer through a pedicure in the summer (the heel scraping is like nails on a chalkboard), I just can’t be bothered to care about my fingernails and it’s painfully obvious.
But Hadley is the worst of us all and has always thrown a huuuuuuge fit whenever we’ve attempted to cut her nails. This probably stems from deep-rooted anxieties of when she was just a week old, I attempted to clip them and accidentally cut her.
As if being a new mom wasn’t stressful enough, we were on our way out the door to meet Grandma for lunch. So, I was the Mother of Improvisation and put a little stock on her hand. By the time we arrived, her baby paw was perched in the air, the sock saturated in blood.
Ahh, good memories.
So, when my mom suggested we take Hadley for her first mani-pedi before she got baptized, I was wary. I mean, you practically have to hold the girl down to clip her nails and how would she do in public?
Turns out, surprisingly well.
So well, in fact, when we were in Calgary, she was excited for a girl’s day out for yet another mani-pedi.
That was over a month ago and her nails are looking mangy. I heard Jamie cutting his nails and begged him to cut the kids’ as well. Bode was game but Hadley took one look at him and said,
“Naw, I’d rather go to the pedicure place.”
And so it begins.
Tuesday was the first day I’ve felt quasi-normal so I decided I’d make it a big, exciting day with this tweet:
After 5 comatose sick days, I’m going to Target AND Costco today. #LivingItUp
My follow-up tweet a few hours later?
Had 1st outing to Costco since getting sick. When I went to check-out, I realized I had someone else’s cart. Crawling back into my hole.
I’m apparently not ready for the real world yet.
Welp, the last several days have been an unexpected bust. All the research and hikes I did leading up to helping my friend Tiffanie take the Scouts on a 20-mile hike on Labor Day were for naught because I got sick.
Really sick.
As in I can-barely-make-it-up-the-stairs-without-passing-out sick.
I’ve wised up over the years and instead of wallowing in misery for several days before seeking medical attention, I can tell the difference between a cold and an infection/virus.
Mostly because I rarely get colds and tend to go for the Big Dogs.
We have a lovely treasure trove of antibiotics from my frequent outbreaks and I started on them right away. However, on Night 2 I was in a lot of pain so Jamie gave me a half a Percocet.
It numbed the pain but it was like SPEEEEEEEEEEED. “LOOK AT ME! I’M AWAKE ALL NIGHT! AND STILL SICK!”
Note to self: Stay away from Percocet if I ever want to sleep again.
I feel really bummed I had to miss the big hike and also our annual trek to St. Mary’s Glacier on Saturday but this is not the first time something like this has happened. Four years ago, Jamie and I were supposed to lead a large group of teenage girls on their first ever multi-day backpacking trip for girl’s camp.
Note: I said supposed to.
I instead spent that week on my deathbed due to the plague that struck the night before our trip. This wasn’t your friendly, everyday sniffling and hacking plague.
Are you sensing a pattern here? Yes, extreme illness but perhaps the Lord is sending a very strong message: He does not want me taking the youth in the backcountry under any circumstances.
Duly noted. Now, can I please get better?
The kids and I spent the last several days snuggled up on our couch in the basement having a Lord of the Rings marathon. Now, this isn’t something I ever would have shown my kids (Harry Potter terrifies them) but when we were at my in-laws for Christmas a couple of years ago, LOTR was on TV and they loved it.
A few months later, we watched the trilogy and as the final credits rolled, little Bode proclaimed, “Dis is the best day of my life.”
The kid apparently had a pretty low standard.
But laying low is just what we’ve been doing and it’s been the one glorious part of our busted long weekend.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. Learn More