You may recognize most of the title to this post from a famous children's book "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Day" where a young boy wakes up and everything seems to not go his way. In the book you realize a lot of it was poor Alexander's attitude and that looked at with different eyes many of the bad things that happened seemed comical. Well, that being said you now know why I have waited for the month of June to pass so that I can look back on that dreaded month with new eyes and laugh about some of the harder moments because yes now I can see the humor.
The month didn't start out so bad...after all this was the much anticipated month that my parents were going to come home from Serbia and was framed with excitement and PRESSURE. Pressure to get everything done before they came home. Pressure to get our house and their house and everything else just so, so that when they came home it would be perfect. Hello my name is Daniel and I am a perfectionist....this is where you all say "Hi Daniel" and make me feel welcome and secure in opening up about my weakness (that I think is a strength...not willing to let that go just yet). Anyways back to the month....Anna and I had set about making out lists (we are big lists people) so we would be organized in our approach. We even were able to host a neighborhood BBQ for people in our new ward to get to know people and be proactive in our approach. That is when the storm clouds gathered and the Lord laughed at our plans...
The night after our BBQ Anna got sick...now when Anna gets sick it isn't a passing fancy but rather a here is a brochure on grave plots and what would you like sung at your funeral type of sick. She had a fever and ended up being bed ridden for the entire week. Now I have a flexible work schedule which I love but my week was slammed and I was in the middle of working on a very arduous multi million dollar proposal with a rather difficult partner with no much on his plate so he was focused on this project alone. That being said I decided to work from home and help with the girls because Anna was laying in the morgue in our Master Bedroom. That first Tuesday I discovered Hell and it was on Sheridan Circle. I was overly stressed with the proposal and happened to be on the phone for the 50th time that day with minute changes coming in from said difficult partner when my girls came screaming into the house. Here I am finger in my ear trying to hear the changes the partner wants, girls screaming and running circles around me, my other hand shooing them out of the room all while trying to type up the changes when I clue into what the girls are screaming..."the chickens are out!"
Those bloody chickens...yes the chickens I didn't want and that Anna insisted I would never have to touch, think about or even know were there. The chickens that took up a ton of Anna's time in building a coop and asking me to help even though I wasn't supposed to know about their existence. The chickens with their claws and their pecking that were now free in my yard that I was trying to preserve and protect for the arrival of my parents. So upon hanging up the phone with the difficult partner I had to run around my yard trying to capture these bloody chickens. Throughout the week they continued to escape and I told some friends I was seriously thinking about getting a bucket of KFC extra crispy chicken and sitting down in front of their coop to show them I meant business.
I continued to plod through my own personal hell and finally after 10 hours of work that day alone on revising the proposal I clicked save to only have my computer crash! What the.....I was done....I was livid.....I walked out in the back yard and screamed at the top of my lungs and it was a good thing the chickens weren't out then or I think I could have been recruited for a kicker in the NFL. Luckily when I calmed down and rebooted and searched and prayed I found the proposal and sent it on its blessed way.
Well that Sunday was Fathers Day and things were looking up...Anna had been up the day before, her fever had broke and she seemed to be coming around. No such luck...on Fathers Day she was down again sick as ever with no energy so I not only did everything with the girls I had to make my own Fathers Day meal and eat alone for the second year in a row (she was sick the year before as well...in fact in the past year she has been sick a total of 4 months). On Monday I had to return to the office and even had a business trip to Denver planned. Anna went to the Dr. to find out the Flu had turned into Pneumonia. I won't bore you with a play by play of the next three weeks but the whole month of June was shot. I was not only working full time but was also a full time dad and had to tackle the entire list for my parents homecoming alone. At one point I thought the stress was so bad I may have a heart attack and my first thought was that I would get some rest in the hospital at least.
We made it through the month and to my parents arrival which we had made them a Finish Banner to hold up at the airport and symbolically I felt we were crossing the finish line with them.
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