Screwed

Okay, maybe that's not really an "appropriate, family-friendly" title for this post, but I think it really captures the whole subject fairly well. You'll just have to excuse me. Politeness and tact have completely gone out the window at this point.

Last week was horrible. This week is worse. Everything seems to be going wrong, and I've encountered some strange, unexpected things. I really believe it's because I decided to do another Bible study. I remember this happening with the last study I chose to do. Anything that could happen to discourage me from studying, completing my homework, or even attending the study was happening. And, here we go again. I know it's an attack, but I don't know if I have the strength or energy to stand up under it right now. I already have too much going on. It's so tempting to just admit defeat.

Yesterday is a good example of how this week has been. The boys were at my in-laws' house, and when I went to go and pick them up, Ethan was acting a little droopy. I checked to see if he felt warm, but I didn't think he had a temperature and neither did my mother in-law. As we were driving home, he told me that he felt sick to his stomach. I quickly crossed two lanes of traffic, jerked the car into the vacant parking lot of our newly-constructed CVS Pharmacy, and grabbed him out of his car seat. I knew he probably wasn't sick (he had been eating and drinking just fine the whole day), but I didn't feel like scrubbing throw-up out of my vehicle in 100-degree heat. Anyway, he seemed to be fine, so we got back into the car and went home.

Once I parked the car and we all got out, I noticed a strange noise. A hissing sound. A LOUD hissing sound. When I realized where it was coming from, my heart just sank. I discovered the following object embedded in the tread of my right rear tire, buried all the way to the head.

A nice, big drywall screw.

Lovely, isn't it? I'd like to take a moment to thank the construction crew that worked on our new CVS for their negligence in cleaning up their own mess. A warning to everyone else: if you plan to visit the pharmacy when it opens, you might want to make sure you're prepared to buy new tires, just in case. It would be one thing if they were still in some phase of construction, and I might be a little more understanding, but the building has been finished for a long time, and they should be opening soon. Perhaps a gigantic screw is just not that easy to see. I am, after all, almost legally blind. Okay, I'll end my ranting here.

Ethan does, in fact, have a fever. After the tire fiasco, we went into the house and took his temperature, and it was about 102. As long as he's medicated, he's fine; he's running around and playing with his siblings. My kids do this a lot: run a random, elevated temperature with no other observable symptoms. A day or two later, you would never know there was anything wrong with them.

The part that really sucks is that I won't be able to go to my Bible study this week because of the fevers. My mother in-law says that I'm under attack because I'm trying to strengthen my relationship with God and be in His Word. The devil doesn't like that. Well, I guess he got what he wanted: I'm not going to Bible study.

YOU WON! NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!! 

Maybe next week will be better. It's Vacation Bible School, though, so I'm guessing that if I try to show up every day that a tree is going to fall on my house or something. Spontaneous combustion? Carbon monoxide poisoning? Ebola virus?