How to have a terrible weekend

(I know that really, I should count my blessings because in general my life is good, but just bear with me while I grumpily recount the events of the weekend..)

1. Pick the weekend that Daylight Savings ends, because you've been trying to reset your toddler's eating and sleeping patterns since last Wednesday.

2. Ask the weather gods to ensure that most of the time it will be cold, wet and windy.

3. Then let your toddler catch the cold virus to end all cold viruses. She's not just snotting, cough-y and grumpy, she's got snot for Africa and the coughs sound like the entire population of France is trying to escape her breathing passages (y'know, frogs). It's so bad that the television is on during most of her waking hours, because Wiggles DVDs distract her from both illness and cabin fever.

4.And just before the weather turns nice on the Sunday afternoon, get a call from a family member who needs to have an embarrassingly located boil lanced at the hospital.

5. When you get to the A & E, you're enraged to find that you'll have to pay for parking. Then you find out that you didn't after all, but not until you've already pushed $4 down the parking meter slot.

6. Because it's an especially busy day at the A & E, there will be long delays. By 8pm that evening, you haven't been home in 8 hours.*

7. You're been advised that the boil removal requires a surgical operation, so now you've got something else to worry about other than the fact that your child at home is too congested to sleep.

8. When you get home, the boy is exhausted from caring for, and worrying about, the sick toddler. He's in no condition to look after you.**


* An icing on the cake would be that the homeless person who used the reception's phone before you, left his characteristic homeless person-smell AND some dodgy beads of moisture on the handset. And you only find out after you've put it to your ear.

**On the plus side, the boy wasn't too exhausted to record Gilmore Girls for me.