Last Saturday, my 10 year old daughter and I woke at 4:00am to volunteer at breakfast for the Special Olympics. My daughter worked, literally, like it was her job. Running from table to table, wiping them down, pushing in chairs, throwing away trash.

She worked so intensely that she was sweating, and at one point a man pulled me over to his table where a group of people told me they “had never seen a kid work as hard as the girl in the blue shirt”. When my kid walked over, they gave her a round of applause. I got to puff up my chest and tell them she was mine.

My seven year old son’s defective heart has been acting up lately. He’s been complaining of a “funny feeling…like a butterfly” and yesterday his cardiologist hooked him up to a monitor. He has five large leads stuck to his chest and he wore the monitor over his shoulder all day as he ran and played yesterday. He has been a perfect patient. I’m proud to be his mom.

My husband has been working like a maniac. Long, long hours at the office, then hours more from home in the late evening. He often doesn’t eat dinner until 10:00pm, and stays up until the wee hours on his laptop. Then he gets up at 6:00am to walk both dogs, rain or shine, sleet or snow and on the weekends he spends lots of time with his kids. Everything he does, he does for his family. He is a good man.

As for being proud of myself? Well, at least I have that whole being able to hang a spoon on the end of my nose thing.

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1. The public library is pretty much the biggest scam on the planet. Free books, free music, free movies for everyone! Take five books if you want…we trust you.

2. If my son can do something he knows is wrong, he will.

3. I love watching my kids play ball in the summer, but by the time July rolls around with her 90 degree heat and 90% humidity, and her peri-menopausal, PMS attitude (oh wait…that’s me) I’m kind of over it. And, at least half of me secretly hopes they don’t make it to the tournaments.

4. If you happen to be sitting under a tree at your daughter’s softball game and a big purple glob plops onto your shirt and pants, you will be disgusted because you think it’s bird poop. Then you will be really relieved when you realize it’s just a rotten mulberry.

5. I have had bad headaches since I was eight years old. Last Tuesday, I eliminated sugar from my diet and I haven’t had a headache since. You would think this would make me stop eating chocolate forever. You would be wrong.

6. When someone asks me if I’m doing Atkins or South Beach and I tell them I’m doing the Suzanne Somers diet and they laugh at me, is it wrong for me to hit them over the head with a Thighmaster?

7. Heterosexual men shouldn’t walk miniature poodles. Okay to own. Not okay to walk.

8. My 10 year old daughter waits to cut her toenails until I begin referring to them as talons.

9. I asked her if she would mind if I shared that toenail tidbit, and she said, “Not as long as you post a picture of them.”

10. I wouldn’t do that to you.

11. If you buy a black lab puppy from a breeder because the bloodlines are healthy, and in the first eight weeks that you have her she gets a UTI, mites, two staph infections, anemia, drinks latex paint and eats a rock, you’re going to want to kick yourself for not going to the pound and getting a mutt. You’ll also want to kick the breeder.

12. Then you’ll see her adorable puppy face and none of that will even matter.

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The other day my seven year old son came in the room where I was reading and proudly announced, “I just peed in the bathtub!”

I put down the newspaper. “What? Why?”

“Because my sister was using the toilet and I needed to pee really bad.”

This conversation would make perfect sense…if we didn’t have two other toilets.

The next afternoon, he was eating some grapes when he dropped his entire bowl on the floor. Because we have two dogs, there is no such thing as a five-second rule in this house. My husband told him to go wash off the grapes before eating any more of them.

After a few minutes my son returned with any empty bowl.

I asked, “Where are your grapes?”

“I put them down the drain.”

I hesitantly asked, “In the kitchen sink?”

“No. In the bathroom.”

My BBQ skewers have never come in so handy.

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I was sick yesterday. Really sick. Dizzy and exhausted with a horrible headache that is still lingering today. I thought, maybe, it was the case of beer I drank while camping over the weekend. Until my daughter came down with it too.

My daughter rarely gets sick. She is going into the fifth grade and hasn’t thrown up since March of her second grade year. And, I better not have jinxed myself by typing that.

The fact that she doesn’t get ill very often makes this story even worse. This one event guarantees I will never win Mother of the Year.

In August, 2003 my husband won a fun-filled, family trip from his employer. He received four nights in a nice Cleveland hotel, four tickets to Cedar Point (the world’s best amusement park…just sayin’), eight tickets to Sea World (which meant we got to go two days in a row), four tickets to an Indians game and a fully-paid dinner at an expensive restaurant.

We drove up to Cleveland on Wednesday, August 13. The morning of the 14th, as we were preparing for our hour-long drive to Cedar Point, my daughter complained of a stomachache. By the time we got to the amusement park, she had a fever. I gave her some Tylenol and she did her best to have a good time.

Late that afternoon the power went out at the park. Luckily we all had our feet firmly planted on the ground and because we had been there for over six hours, my daughter was sick, and we still had two days at Sea World ahead of us, we decided it was a good time to leave. We hopped in the car and started to look for a gas station, as our car was nearly on empty.

Only problem? Every gas station along the highway back to Cleveland didn’t have power either. And, when we made it back to our hotel on the fumes of the gas tank we realized there was no electricity there…oh, and no water either.

By this time, my daughter was feeling very, very ill. A friend who lives in Cleveland brought us a small amount of gas and despite my daughter’s stomach pain, headache and fever, we dragged her to Sea World (they had power) the next day in hopes it would take her mind off of it.

We did the same thing the day after that, even though she was still feeling sick. We went to the restaurant that night and she wouldn’t eat a thing. We then went to the Indians game, where we stayed for maybe two innings before leaving because she felt so bad. That evening, she was pathetic and so horribly sick that we almost took her to the hospital.

On Sunday morning, as we were returning to Columbus, she was feeling better, but I started to feel sick. By the time we got home two hours later I was in such pain that my husband took me to the emergency room. I had all the same symptoms as my daughter, but I was only sick for a short time before I knew there was something really wrong.

After a couple of hours and a few tests, including a spinal tap, it was determined that I had viral meningitis. Not the kind that kills you, but still. I spent the next four days in a dark room until my symptoms improved.

That’s right, we had been dragging our daughter around amusement parks for three days, in the August heat, during the great blackout of 2003, making her stay at a hotel that didn’t even have ice or a flushable toilet and she had meningitis the whole time.

It’s six years later and I still feel guilty.

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