Arthritis Mom

I read somewhere about a woman with rheumatoid arthritis who ran a marathon. I am really impressed by this, I don't know how she would do that and not ruin her feet. I remember the days before rheumatoid arthritis when I would embark on the occasional lengthy shopping excursion, nothing as challenging as a marathon. I've only done this a couple times since developing rheumatoid arthritis because it can take a few days to recover, and it really hurts my feet! A lot!

But it can be done when necessary. I have occasionally pushed myself beyond what I should because I had to - my all day shopping trip to find wedding shoes a couple years ago is one example. This week was another example.

As soon as we got home we unloaded, or should I say "exploded" our luggage, baby gear, dvd players, video game devices, books, towels, fishing and swimming gear, toys and laundry. Some things got put away, the boys went back to their mom's, my husband had to go out of town, and I had a bunch of other tasks that took priority at the beginning of the week. Monday and Tuesday were very busy and exhausting, I spent no time cleaning or organizing.

On Wednesday my daughter and I woke up to no TV and no internet. Within a few hours and amazingly only two phone calls to my husband and one to Direct TV, I was able to fix the TV issue by resetting the circuit breaker. The modem and router were fried and needed to be replaced, but I felt up to the task. I honestly thought dragging the twins to the store would be the hardest part of the process. It was not. I spent several hours Wednesday night and Thursday morning attempting to install the new modem and router, and speaking to various technical support staff at HP, Verizon and Linksys. Just for fun, I'll tell you HP wins on friendliness, Linksys wins on effort, and Verizon comes in a distant third. A company named Zoom made the modem and I didn't need to call them, so they win the grand prize.

By Thursday afternoon I had been running on empty for about 4 days. I had one late night because I couldn't sleep from my cold, a second late night because my kids couldn't sleep due to their colds, and a third very late night trying to get online. On Thursday in addition to finally getting the modem working, I got two kids to music lessons, one to an orthodontist, entertained twins in a waiting room for an hour where there were allowed to touch nothing (they did their best to destroy magazines and potted plants), made three other quick stops, bathed the twins and put them to bed and drove my daughter an hour round-trip so she could go back to her dad's house. By 7:45pm I was home and done with everything that absolutely had to be done that day.

However, I knew my husband was coming home around midnight from a long day of working and traveling, and I really like for him to come home to a semi-clean house. I wanted the house to be cleaned so I could enjoy it when he came home too. It's that moment in the race where you think you can't go on but you push yourself to keep going anyway. So I picked up the toys, did the dishes, wiped the counters, shook out the rugs, swept the floors, did some laundry, made the bed and cleaned the bathroom. I felt so much better when that was all done. My feet hurt but it was well worth it.

I may not be able to run a marathon, but there are days (or weeks) where it sure seems like I do. My favorite part? The satisfaction of crossing that finish line.