I need an illness indicator button (among other things)

Now that daughter is no longer sitting on my arm, watching me profess my love for Jon Stewart, I can blog freely (more freely anyway.)

Here's what I need:

1. An illness indicator button on the forehead of each child with two settings. Green for "Send her to school; she's not that sick," and Red for "Keep her at home; she's actually sick." This is one of the worst parts of parenting - the whole questioning of whether a child is sick enough to stay home.

Daughter #1 (age 11) napped yesterday evening, didn't want to get up this morning. Her color didn't look right but not really bad enough to keep her home. Guess I was wrong. She was sick enough to go to the nurse for a nap - which didn't revive her.

Now, I have to decide to send her tomorrow or not. I wish there was a button telling me if she can do school or not tomorrow.

2. More patience. When I'm sick, I gripe plenty. It's so much harder to listen to someone else feel pitiful.

3. To become a more easy going, flexible, tolerant mother. I think it's been 8 or 9 weeks since I've had a normal week. And I'm getting pretty irritable.

Each week, something has disrupted my plans:

• There was a 2 hr school delay. Actually, there might have been a 2 hr delay the previous week, too. And there was a snow day in January - can't remember if it was adjacent to these other schedule disruption weeks.
• Daughter #2 was sick. There was a school cancelation for snow.
• Daughter #1 was sick.
• I was sick, full week of flu.
• I was recovering from week of flu and still taking naps.
• I was mostly better but there was an early dismissal (there might have been a 2 hr delay a different day that week.)
• A daughter was sick (sadly, I can't remember which one.)
• Both kids home for Spring Break.
• Now, one kid came home sick today. And, I've got no idea whether she's well enough to send tomorrow.

Maybe other people can roll with these things better than I can. But I'm pretty exhausted and frustrated with the whole scenario. I want control of my life back. I want control of my schedule. And, it ain't happening anytime soon.

Next week, my mother is coming to town for a couple of days. I'll miss part of a work day getting her at the airport and part of a work day taking her to my brother's. Now, I was the one who said that I was happy to pick her up and would make whatever schedule work. So I'm not complaining about the flight schedule. I just wish I had maybe a couple of weeks of regular life interjected between now and her arrival. Regular life seems pretty elusive right now...