My toes, my tail, my nose.....!

We have an old cassette tape that is a recorded copy of a record of the sound track from an ancient Disney version of 101 Dalmatians. (sort of like a friend of a friend....) In that story the parent dogs are rescuing all the little children dogs. The youngest one is called Roly, and as they are traveling at night, marching miles through the cold and snow, he is complaining and whining. He says, "My toes are froze, and my tail is froze, and my nose is froze." That has become a family byword. Whenever Hubby or I find ourselves complaining too long about some whiney little thing, we finish up with Roly's complaint, as in, "I'm tired, I didn't sleep well last night, I ache, I'm coughing and sneezing, my head feels like concrete... and my toes are froze and my tail is froze...." And then we laugh a little and pat each other on the shoulder sympathetically.

So that's where I am today. We had a busy weekend, fighting a cold all the while. You remember, the one we brought home after our cold rainy weekend at the lake last weekend? Hubby and I had been volunteered by Hubby's father to work at our small town's historical festival on Saturday, baking bread in the outdoor brick oven. We know a lot about baking bread, but very little about baking in an outdoor brick oven, so it was a challenge. And, as it happened, Sunday was also an interesting day.

Our Saturday and Sunday looked like this:

[Friday night-- Wake often during the night, coughing and choking from severe post-nasal drip and sore throat.]

Saturday:
7:00am-- Start a batch of bread; then shower and dress, grudgingly putting on a reasonably old-fashioned white blouse that I dislike as a concession to the last-minute request to dress historically.

8:00am-- Help Hubby load trailer with everything needed to mix and bake several batches of bread, forgetting the measuring spoons and cups and the timer.

9:30am-- Arrive late at event with bread loaves nearly over-risen and discover the oven is not hot enough yet.

10:00-- Cough and shiver in the howling gale under threatening skies. Go home for hooded sweatshirt to cover up authentic dress and keep head warm in order to prevent imminent onset of bronchitis. Which, by the way, improved the day immensely. Also pick up forgotten items.

10:30-3:00-- Make, bake, and sell 18 loaves of bread, make one batch of biscuits, cover for mother-in-law at her waffle booth while she goes home for more ingredients. Eat one biscuit and call it dinner. Talk to people, visit other booths, try to explain how the brick oven works from my scanty store of knowledge. Clean up and pack up. Receive unexpected thanks and compliments and even a little money-- enough to cover the cost of ingredients for the day.

3:00 till bedtime-- Put away everything we got out this morning. Make a batch of bread for the family at home, and grin wryly at the irony. Bake a batch of cookies. Make family fend for themselves for supper. Eat sandwich LovelyDaughter graciously made for me. Sit limply. Get into fascinating conversation with the family and stay up till midnight. Sigh deeply and go to bed stressed and overtired.

Midnight till morning-- Dream too much. Wake occasionally to cough.

Sunday:
6:40am-- Wake to alarm. Hit snooze.

7:25-- Jump up in a panic to shower. Wake kids. Hubby having a hard time moving, because a head cold has invaded overnight. Get dressed.

8:05-- Wake family, AGAIN. Start to panic, AGAIN. We have to leave by 8:15 to arrive at worship team practice on time. It starts at 9:00. It's a forty minute drive.

8:30-- Sit everyone down for breakfast. One child still in shower.

8:50-- Run around frantically looking for worship leader's phone number. Fail to find it. Call someone else and ask them to pass along the message that we will be 40-45 minutes late.

8:55-- Pile everyone in van with instruments (my violin, GuitarGeek's two guitars, DrummerDude's drumsticks, Hubby's bass-- oops, LovelyDaughter can't find her tin whistles. Fortunately, they're optional.) Grab bread and cookies and thermos of water for later.

9:00-- Leave. Finally.

9:35-- Arrive at church. Quickly set up for practice. Have whirlwind run-through. Thankfully, no one is upset at us.

10:00-- Time for church to start. Pastor still not back from first service, which is held in another building.

10:10-- Church starts. We're on!

11:30-- Hubby goes to van to lie down with his head cold.

12:15-- Church over, late, as usual.

12:30-- Wake Hubby. Go buy lunchmeat and chips and fruit.

1:30-- Spread out picnic for family at the empty church.

2:00-- Everyone scatters to find a place to rest. Good luck, since this church has no pews- only stacking chairs. Try to lie down, and find it impossible since gunk tickles my throat irresistibly as soon as I become horizontal.

3:00-- Join worship team in loading church bus with music gear. (We have a large worship team with enough people to have two complete teams that trade off Sundays. For this excursion the team includes the worship leader/keyboard player, another lead singer/guitar player, a backup singer, our family, another guitar player, a saxophone player, and the guy in charge of the visuals. Also along for the trip are quite a few people from church, including the pastor. In fact, the bus is full and someone drives another vehicle for the overflow.)

3:30-- Church bus leaves. We head for a small town that is about 90 minutes away to join them for a worship service.

5:00-- Arrive at destination. Unload bus. Set up gear and instruments. Do sound check and short run-through of a few songs.

6:00-- Service begins. Worship team leads worship for two hours. LovelyDaughter is loaned a whistle by the sax player who happens to have one in the right key, and gets to play after all.

7:00-- Go ask bus driver to let me in to the bus to get Hubby's long-sleeved shirt. He's suffering from chills and sneezing, but continues valiantly playing bass.

8:00-- Meeting ends with prayer, scripture, and celebration. It was great. Join congregation at the sandwich table. Yay! Dinner was a long time ago. After eating, load bus.

9:00-- Bus leaves.

10:30-- Bus arrives at home church parking lot. Unload gear. Re-load into van. Drive home. Discuss meeting and everyone's cold symptoms all the way home. Hand out ibuprofen, and liquid B vitamins and vitamin C to all comers, including myself. (I came prepared...)

11:15-- Arrive at home. Unload van. Hand out more cold symptom relievers.

12:00-- Go to bed.

Monday morning (today):
8:05-- Wake up. Discover that yesterday I was only pretending to be sick. Today I am SICK.

9:40 till ?-- Yuck. Ugh. Cough, cough, choke. sneeze. blow nose. don't stand up too fast. try to blink stickiness out of eyes. Take note of Niagara Falls in throat and sore muscles all over and headache and sinus ache.

Oh and did I mention that my toes are froze and my tail is froze and my nose is froze?

Ah well, just pat me on the shoulder and nod and smile sympathetically and I'll be all right soon.