I believe in the power of a strong mind. Couple a strong mind with tremendous focus and anything is possible.
I put the power of my mom mind to a test this past weekend.
I waited this long to write about it because I was afraid of jinxing myself.
Guys, I willed away a stomach bug. I did. My sweet eight year old daughter came to me with tears in her eyes and said “I threw up.” I pretended I did not hear her. She repeated herself. “Mom, I threw up. Like nine times.”
I translated this from melodramatic kid speak to normal english in my mind. Maybe she just vurped. Maybe twice. (Vomit burps, tell me I didn’t really need to explain that. Vurps, you guys know what those are, right?)
She ran past me into the bathroom. Her little self was hunched over the toilet.
That wasn’t a vurp.
She stood up and turned to look at me, tears in her eyes again. I mustered every bit of strength I had and I looked deep in to her big, blue eyes. I looked past the sweet face of the child I adore. I’m not sure where stomach bugs reside (in the soul? In the gut?) but I looked there and I said “You can not be sick right now. Do you understand me? You can not be sick. Right now we have lice.”
I was knee deep in laundry when she informed she had thrown up. I had spent more than two hours “nit picking” with the magical metal comb and having my own head picked. I would spend the next 34 hours doing laundry.
I wasn’t fucking kidding.
There would be no stomach bug.
I was waging a war against lice. I didn’t have the manpower to take on a stomach bug. And to be quite honest, there was no way I was spreading towels on beds right now. We had an all out ban on fabric in our home at the moment. You get one towel, one pillow and one blanket. It goes in the downstairs bathroom in the morning and you put all of your dirty clothes directly in the washing machine. I had no space in my washing machine or my head for puke towels.
And it worked. It worked. I was rewarded for this feat of strength with a blizzard and a headcold but I still feel like a winner. At some point this week in between the Lice Laundry and the Snowpocalypse I gave my dryer a little break. I have slugged enough NyQuil to need a trip to rehab but I still feel like I am coming out on top. Because my head doesn’t itch. And nobody has thrown up.
Mind over matter, people. You can do anything. Anything.
When I am not doing laundry I like to let my kids out of the car and then lock the doors. They fake cried until I broke down and got out of the car. But for a few blissful moments I was all alone.
Excitement on the side 