In which it rains and pours

You've probably seen the news about all of the flooding here in Western Washington. It hasn't affected my area much, though I have seen some uncharacteristically horrendous downpours this past two weeks. We get a lot of steady and light rainfall here, usually accompanied by wind, but nothing like the torrential, soaking storms we used to see when we lived in Houston.

(Incidentally, Houston and Seattle get about the same amount of annual rainfall. It's true! The Internet says so!)

Along with the weather, this has been a week of extremes here in my household.

Extreme sickness: Baby E has the rotavirus, which has put us on a diarrhea carousel. (Sorry for the yucky metaphor there.) She missed daycare on Friday, Monday, a half day yesterday, and I'm home with her again today. It's nothing dangerous, we just have to watch for dehydration, and today she finally seems to have kicked it. (Cross your fingers.) On Monday I spent most of my afternoon and evening helping my sister-in-law who came down with some sort of horrible virus herself and needed to be put on an IV at the student health center and then at the emergency room. I am taking my vitamin C and hoping to make it through until December 21st when for two blessed weeks I can get as sick as I want to and not miss work. Which brings me to:

Extreme use of sick days: So for every day a baby can't go to day care, a mom or dad has to stay home. I'm burning through my sick days like a champ, going on 2.5 this week. (Um, why did I want to go back to work?) I think I'm averaging a half sick day per week for the school year, all but one of these for my kids. Thank goodness for a union job and 12 + 2 sick days! And thank goodness for my new sub I discovered who is actually an English teacher! Makes me feel better (slightly) about being gone. I'm trying to see the time as a blessing--how often do Baby E and I get time just to hang out and do girly stuff like go shopping? (Yes, I know, she's only 1. But it's still fun.) Today since she was feeling better we took care of some Christmas errands, heading out to my LYS and JoAnn. Where I experienced:

Extreme pattern and yarn overload: The winter Knitty came out today! And I bought the winter IK today whilst at Apple Yarns (my subscription lapsed). I was literally gasping over some of the designs. Wow. There are SO MANY I want to make! SO MANY...sigh...
I petted the yarn for a while at AY and ordered the Felted Clogs pattern (my folks want slippers for Christmas--will I make the deadline??) and then E and I wandered down to Footworx on a mission to get my Harley-riding father-in-law a pair of manly wool socks. And I experienced:

Extreme sticker shock: Um, SmartWool socks are expensive. I'm sure they're great and all, but if I'm going to pay $18 for a pair of socks, I at least want the pleasure of KNITTING them. Or they should be made of gold. But that's what he wants, and I don't realistically have time to knit him a manly-colored pair, so I ordered them and swallowed my knitterly pride. Maybe for his birthday.

All right, I am extremely behind on the household chores I thought I'd get done today, so here I go off to make the most of my unexpected day. The sun has come out for the first time in weeks and I am glad to see it...I'm thinking laundry, then vacuuming, then time out for some knitting and a movie.