Sinuses and sucky Santa's.

After forcing myself into a mask of minimal makeup, and sitting through over three hours of military Christmas chaos in an uncomfortable hotel fold out chair, I hurried home and passed out with my face in a small lake of drool on my pillow. 2 hours later I woke up to the unforgiving pounding of the left side of my face, and a burning in my chest that whistled with every breath. Every 5 minutes, for at least 2 hours, I told myself I was going to drive down to the ER and beg for relief, but eventually settled into a not so cozy nest on the couch downstairs where I was able to finally fall asleep. Before the sun came up, I was dressed and driving to the urgency clinic, hoping to be the first one there, and seen right away. Apparently I wasn't the only one. I pulled into the parking lot as they were unlocking the doors, and was astonished by the line of elderly who had beat me to the punch. Well, luckily, I had been there at least 1,000 times before, so didn't have to fill out any paperwork, and was seen 3rd. By the time the cranky nurse that called me back was breaking the scale with my weight, the waiting room was completely full, and I was counting my blessings that I got there when I did. There's nothing worse than wasting hours upon hours in a walk-in clinic lobby full of obnoxious coughing and sniffling. The doctor asked me, "so whens that baby due?". I told her the day after Christmas, and then tugged on her shirt sleeve and looked at her with wide eyes and begged her to make the pain stop. An hour later I left with both an ear and sinus infection. I guess I could have had them when I got there, but until I heard her say it, I had just been fighting a cold. I must have thanked her 10 times for my prescription, even though she said it wasn't the best for my condition. There aren't many options for a gal in her 37th week of pregnancy are there? My biggest fear for the past 5 days, is that I would go into labor and not have the option to hold my dear Charlie and risk him getting sick too. I slammed down the first 2 pills from my z-pack immediately, and maybe its just the placebo effect, but already feel much much much better. When I got home from my early morning doctors office adventures, Christopher woke up Miss Eleanore Sue, we got her all dolled up in her fancy Christmas dress, and headed down to the BX (a military version of a mini mall) to meet Santa Claus, as promised. Too bad it was an awful Santa, that had me working extra hard for the next half hour to get her excited about the jerk that she had just met. Next weekend I think we'll fork over the money and take her to the North Pole, also known as the Abilene Mall, and introduce her to the real Santa. Or at least, a Santa that gets payed to be jolly.