Ear Infection

People, we are going down like the Titanic. Our iceberg is an ear infection, a brutal affliction that reminds us mortals not to go swimming, ever. Children get ear infections all the time, no problem. Go to the doctor, get some drops and whammo everything is back to normal in a couple of days.

However, it is not the children that have the ear infection. It is the mighty Hossmom that has been struck with this plague since Friday and it has gotten worse. As it has deteriorated, so has my patience with the children.

I'm terrible at this, I admit it. I'm awful at taking care of sick people and I try so hard. But I never seem to know what to do. For the past three days I have been running the whole family to the doctor and back for drops, pills and voodoo spells. But no weed, this is not a medical marijuana state and this is a drug free family. Please just ignore that very large bottle of Vicodin on the dresser.

Trying to take care of a very sick wife and two high strung kids, it turns out, is a fucking beating. Someone is always crying, all the time, all day. It's midnight and the only reason no one is crying now is because Hossmom is finally sleeping (thanks Vicodin!), and I may have slipped some Bourbon into the kids dinner time milk. It is the first time for the last three days that I have gotten a bit of peace to myself. I may start drinking. That's a stellar idea, lets do that.

After the doctors visits I have been having to go pick up different medications in order to give Hossmom some relief. Who knew that an ear infection on an adult could be so rough? The whole right side of her head is pink and inflamed and I know it's got to hurt like a bastard. However, Hossmom doesn't do pain real well. She always said that she could do big pain well and pointed to the fact that she gave birth to two kids and was tough.

What I don't tell her is that when she did give birth, she cursed me and punched me in the crotch. And afterwards, there was a lot of crying. Like there is now and I have no idea how to handle crying.

It's my Achilles heel in the awesomeness of Hossman. I just stand there like a dear in headlights, not knowing what to do or what to say. There wasn't much crying in my house growing up. We came from the school of "suck it up" because my father was in a wheelchair most of my life. How can you cry when you can still walk? Dries up those tears pretty fast.

When Hossmom isn't crying because of the pain, Little Hoss and Bubba Hoss are playing their new game that they have called "Punch Me In The Face." They stand on opposite sides of the room and each put a fist out. Then they run at each other. Whoever gets punched in the face loses. It's 3 to 2, in favor of Little Hoss. The game ends with someone usually crying. I swear I didn't teach them this.

For 2 and 1/2 days though I thought that I handled this well. I really did. I got everyone what they needed and I cleaned the shit out of the house. This is also the weekend that I had planned on doing big projects, things like cleaning crayon off the wall and removing sticky hand prints from the TV screen. It went well. I would be forcing the kids to clean then Hossmom would need me. I would go upstairs and put drops in her ear, which hurt her so that she started crying. I would stand in the middle of the floor for about 5 minutes until I heard crying from downstairs. I would then leave Hossmom while I went to see the latest scores of Punch Me In The Face.

That would break any man. But I held my own until tonight. It was bath time. The kids were getting undressed and screaming. I was screaming at them to be quiet. My daughter reminded me that Kylan says to calm down. Then Hossmom comes out of the room crying because she needs something. She is topless to so that distracts me, as it would any full blooded hetero man. I put Hossmom back to bed while giving her pain pills while continuing to scream at the kids to get undressed for bath time.

I finally get Hossmom back to bed and this time I'm rubbing her back because that seems more appropriate than standing there and looking at my feet.

I hear the door open. I hear laughter. I hear the door close. Of course, why not?

I run downstairs to see my two kids, buck naked, running around outside. But on the plus side, they did follow directions and get undressed. I think that was my breaking point.