Five days...just five little days

And the panic has really started to set in. I think I live in the messiest house in the world right now. The clutter of toys and papers and books doesn't normally bother me because that gets cleaned up fairly quickly when we put our minds to it. It's the little things that get me--the dust on all the windowsills, the residue around the edge of the sink. This is rather odd, because normally I am completely oblivious to anything like that (though I always feel like other people must notice everything that I haven't cleaned in my house).

I have a compulsion to clean anytime I am going away longer than overnight, because I hate to walk into the house and immediately see all the things that need to be done. You can imagine how bad it's getting now, when we will be gone for 10 days (which is, I believe, the longest that Jason and I have ever gone anywhere other than our honeymoon) and will be coming home with another child. It's also combined with the sudden abhorrence of clutter. I need the clutter to go away so that I can start taking out things and organizing them for packing.

Normal compulsion + nesting instinct. It's not a happy thing.

Now, you would expect that this has gotten me to clean and organize. Wouldn't you? Don't bet on it. I'm so bogged down in work work right now that I haven't had a second to even start making my obsessively detailed packing list.

It is being compounded by a child who decided last night that the almost four years of karmic balancing for vomiting should come to an end. Patrick developed a milk allergy when he was 9 months old; it wasn't diagnosed until 10 1/2 months, so he threw up on me extensively every time he nursed. He hadn't thrown up again until last night, when he came downstairs an hour after going to bed and said "My shirt is dirty. I need a new one."

Sweet child that he is, he even brought another one but needed help putting it on. I started to do so and then my nasal passages were assaulted full-force. We went upstairs, where Jason gave him a bath and I removed every item of the bed that had been doused by cheese pizza and black olives. This included both pillows.

Clearly, we kept him "home" today. Home meant that he got to come to work with me. First we went to my normal campus, where I showed up at 8 a.m. specifically to help my students prepare for their midterm on Monday. No one showed, despite them being horrified that I might not be there and promising to show up.

I then dragged poor Patrick to another campus, where he watched a video while I helped set up our event for the Georgia Science Olympiad, which takes place tomorrow.

Later, I took him back to the original campus for a department meeting. It was quite obvious that he didn't feel great, as he curled up on my lap and didn't make a peep until the last 5 minutes, when he whispered several times that he was ready to leave. Then finally, we went home.

I had planned on getting several hours of grading and test-writing done this afternoon; that didn't happen, but my boy is feeling better.

I still have midterms to grade tonight, though. And I have to be back to campus #2 at 8 a.m. tomorrow to help judge the Science Olympiad.

But I did get a cool Science Olympiad shirt.