154.2 - What a day

Guys, you would not believe the day I had. First, let me say it was supposed to be a half day of work with the afternoon being my birthday (which is Sunday, the 13th) gift to myself--a relaxing and pampering facial and massage--then I was going to run 3 miles. But that didn't happen.

We were backed up today at work because we lost all the power to our building Thursday because of a freak occurrence downed power line and it took all day for "them" to fix it, and we pretty much did nothing on Thursday after 11:30 a.m. So I had a crap load of work to do, not to mention DH has a new client meeting on Saturday morning I had to help him prep for, and I had umpteen things to do for our clients' last minute IRA contributions.

And our server and hard drive blew because of the power surge/outage and so we didn't have access to most of our files, which freaked DH out (thankfully our computer guy was able to recover the files, but we didn't get them until after 3 p.m. today). And for a while we thought the printer was blown, too, until our computer guru told us to check the network cord, which thankfully was just loose.

But it all boiled down to a nonstop work day with lots of curse words and DH and I having a tiff or two and me working until 6:00 p.m. Which was not in my plans at all. DH is STILL at the office working, and it's 11:30 p.m. right now (poor guy).

Friday nights we often get together with a big group of friends from church, and tonight since I was without DH, I thought I'd take the kids instead of being cooped up at home by myself. Great choice, it was nice to be with our church family. But then I learned that one of our friends was in the ER with an appendix attack. She's okay, they are taking it out, and she'll be fine. Did I mention this is the friend who has 4 kids? So her husband is with her and the kids got farmed out to various families. We've got the 4 year old daughter, who is sweet as can be and gets all of Sophie's hand me down clothes. She'll probably be with us until Sunday night, is my guess, which is fine but it adds an extra element of effort to my weekend. And I probably won't be able to run tomorrow morning at the gym like I'd hoped, unless I can get the gym to take a guest kid (which I'm going to try to do because I need to run tomorrow, and bad).

The worst thing that happened has to do with Luke. This breaks my heart in so many ways. On Wednesday night I noticed that he had some bruises on his bottom, in a line across the top of his butt cheeks. I thought they looked a little strange, and was going to ask his day care lady on Thursday morning if he had fallen or something. Well I forgot, then Thursday night I saw them again and they were darker, as bruises tend to get as they age. I asked Luke what happened to his bottom, how did he get hurt. He said "Ginger." I said what about Ginger? He said "Ginger hit me." This woman is a Christian and has been taking care of my son for 2 years. So I thought, okay he's a toddler, maybe he's not sure what he's saying here.

So I asked her about the bruises this morning (I didn't tell her what Luke said) and she was really strange about the whole thing. She didn't ask to look at them, didn't act defensive but barely reacted at all. I asked if he had fallen or bumped into something hard--there are 4 or 5 small bruises on his bum in a line, and the kid doesn't bruise easily like I do, so it took some force to get these--and she said something like "oh I don't know, you know how kids are, they play and fall down." I just didn't have a good feeling about it. Then, my mom tells me that Ginger acted weird when she picked Luke up today (mom gets Luke early on Fridays). She said she was talking about how she's potty training Luke and the methods she's using and how Luke didn't want to potty today, and Mom said she just seemed defensive and like she was covering up for something. Mom tells me all this before she has any idea about the bruising and my conversation with Ginger and what Luke said.

It all just adds up to too many questions. And Luke has said in the past, on more than one occasion, "Ginger smacked me." I have not thought much of that, because, well, because he's 2 years old and toddlers get their hands smacked and bottoms swatted sometimes. But I've never seen a bruise on him until now. And the way she reacted was just weird. And my gut tells me I've got to get him out of there.

Mark doesn't want him going back either, and I talked with several of my friends tonight and they agreed that even if she didn't do anything, it's not worth taking a chance on it. So Luke has to leave his day care and thankfully my friend Brandy has a day care in her home where Luke can go until he gets into a day care center later this summer for early pre-school (he won't be 3 until November).

So I've been crying a lot today and have felt just awful about all this. I've felt bad for my baby boy, who thankfully isn't seriously hurt but I still hate it that he was in any kind of potential harm or made to feel bad. For Ginger, who I truly don't think would hurt any child but things just aren't adding up here; if she did hurt him then she needs mental help and I should file charges, but I can't prove anything and what if she's innocent? And for me, because I absolutely hate confrontation and I have to call this woman Monday and tell her I'm not bringing my son back to her ever again because he said she hit him, and even though there's no way I can say with 100% certainty that I believe she hurt him, I can't take him back to a place where there's even a 5% chance he could be harmed. He's got bruises, he says Ginger hit me, and she didn't even attempt to explain what might have happened, plus my gut tells me things aren't right. This is going to suck big time, and I'm sure I'll cry while talking with her because I can't control my emotions when I'm angry and confrontational and nervous and sad. It all comes streaming out of my eyes.

It's just been too much. I could care less about food, and haven't eaten much today except for tonight, when I took the kids through McD's drive through on the way home and got some chocolate chip cookies. I inhaled 4. Barely tasted them. Just wanted to be numb.

There are good things on the horizon though. I have new day care immediately, thanks to my gracious friend. My family is healthy. We are getting new business. And I got to reschedule my spa appointment for Monday, which is the day after my birthday but it's close enough.