By Meg Hodson
I am a positive person. I see the good in people, I weigh both sides, I look on the bright side. We live on the sunny side of the street. I don't like to get down. Life is good.
That's not to say life doesn't come with it's share of complications. And I accept that.
But I've had a really tough time these past couple of weeks. I contemplated whether I wanted to write a post that was a "downer". But this blog is my online journal, my place to vent. So here goes.....
Christmas sucked this year.
I don't use the term sucked lightly. I wanted to make sure I had the definition correct, so here is what Google had to say:
be very bad, disagreeable, or disgusting.
"I love your country, but the weather sucks"
| synonyms: | be very bad, be awful, be terrible, be dreadful, be horrible;
informalstink
"the weather sucks"
|
Okay, good, got the definition spot on.
Let me paint the picture leading up to Christmas vacation. My husband's family lives in Cleveland, Ohio. We usually try to visit 2 times/year, but we haven't been for a visit since August 2013. We haven't been able to afford it. But we pushed through and made it happen this year. Yay! Our tickets were booked for December 22nd.
My 2 sons got sick in early December. I would never want them to get sick, of course, but I sang a little happy song inside because I was like "Great, they won't be sick on Christmas!" I told my daughter if she was going to get sick, to do so at least a couple days before we left. Sure enough, she got sick on the 20th. It ruined some plans we had with family before we left, but dog gone it, she was going to be okay for the trip. Rejoice!
I started to get ill the day we were set to leave. We were taking a red eye, so I was dreading trying to sleep while being sick, but okay, I will push through. The flight was awful, I got no sleep. Once we arrived, I continued to get worse. I had the flu and was basically alternating shots of Tylenol and cold remedies. I won't go into specifics, but I have been sick nearly 2 weeks. My cough is finally better as I write this.
Christmas Day was nice enough and it was wonderful being with family. But my son got sick that day with a fever. My youngest son, although never officially sick with a fever or vomiting, just didn't feel quite right for a few days, too. Then, it inevitably hit my husband and my father-in-law. My husband's brother and entire family got sick and we haven't seen them for a week while here.
Plans got derailed, activities were cancelled.
But we still had snow to look forward to! We were in the Midwest after all; it always snows in Cleveland during Winter. It was the answer to my prayers. Even if I had to sit in a cozy chair drinking tea, I could look out the window and watch the peaceful snow.
Each day I would check the weather forecast, and each day that they had predicted snow, it never came. That quintessential snowflake on my phone's weather app would disappear. As I write this post on our last day here on vacation, they are predicting a 90% chance of snow at 6 pm. We leave at 4:30 am tomorrow morning. Here's hoping. But it's been a record-breaking December here and their lack of snow, so I am not banking on it.
I am looking for the silver lining. I am trying to decipher the message. It's hard. I know crap happens, but when it's a trip you have waited 16 months to take, it hurts a little. Okay, it hurts a lot.
I can only assume that 2015 has something in store for my family that will be beyond our wildest dreams. That absolutely has to be the explanation, right? I'm looking forward to what that might be. I will keep you posted.
But I swear to the good Lord, if it rains while we are in Disneyland for Spring Break, I am not taking another vacation ever for a VERY long time.
