Getting back to healthy.

Edited to add: this was supposed to post last Friday. Just noticed it sitting in my drafts. Whoops.

The Ex was discharged from the hospital yesterday – after eight crazy days of “fun-filled” mysteries and somewhat questionable care. But! He has a shiny new diagnosis of lupus. That will have its own set of worries and treatment plans, but I’m thankful the congestive heart failure was only secondary and he won’t be hanging out on the heart transplant list.

Since they did spring him free and since he hasn’t seen the girls much in the past week, he was a little anxious to borrow them. And since the girls and I have been spending so much quality time together (and since I was a little desperate for a good, long, stress-busting run) and because I’m a good person, I let him take the girls for dinner last night. My run was amazing. I haven’t run in almost two weeks because of my rather persistent, two-rounds-of-antibiotic-worthy bronchitis and then watching the girls while the Ex was in the hospital. It’s been awhile. So, yeah, I did fall back a little in my endurance. I only got in about a mile and a half. But it felt so frickin’ good to be out there, flying along. I felt like I could set the world on fire again! So that was the second good thing about last night.

The very best part – better than running and feeling amazing, better than the Ex rejoining the land of the living – was a sort of revelation I had. I spent the past week with the girls without a break…and realized it was actually much easier than I ever would have thought. We all got along better, fought less, and really found our groove. Knowing that I could really do the single mom thing if anything happened to their dad or if we didn’t live near a support system? That’s pretty powerful knowledge. I’ve made it through weeks before, but usually while we were on vacation where rules are lax and plenty of other people are around. This week it was just us. It was homework and baths and dinners to make and lunches to pack. It was a normally scheduled week – and we rocked it. It just goes to show how much kids (and mommies!) love consistency. And maybe hanging out in our jammies all week didn’t hurt!

Not a bad way to end the week and start our weekend, I tell ya.

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Tags: parenting