Sick and Tired

I haven't posted since The Great Bedroom Cleanup of 2005. Guess I'm trying to regain my strength. Still, life goes on and with life comes the recurring challenges that remind us all why parenting isn't a glamorous job. My challenge today is the borderline hypochondriac child. Today, it's a bad stomach ache that caused tears and much angst. I threatened, I cajoled, I persuaded. I even offered a trip to the new H&M as bribery...I tried everything short of dressing her myself and throwing her in the car. Alas, she's hunkered down in her bedroom supposedly sleeping off this gastrointestinal distress. And I'm pissed.

Here's the problem: It's not like this is a huge inconvenience for me. Outside of a dental appointment, I have nothing planned today. I didn't have to reschedule meetings or find a sub for some committee or disappoint a lunch date. And this is part of why I'm home - to be here when a child needs me. If she were green and hurling, I wouldn't bat an eyelash. But her symptoms are always questionable and invisible. Nothing to be proved or disproved. It's her word against mine. I think she should tough it out, she thinks it's so bad that school would be intolerable. What's a mother supposed to do?

So I tell her that her day will consist of staying in her room with no TV and no computer. Just books and bed. This, in hopes that school would look more appealing. It didn't and so here we are.

It's going to be a long day.......