Feeling Sorry for Myself

Why can't a cold just be a cold?
I started feeling ill a week ago. Runny nose, sore throat, the symptoms of a fairly standard cold. I remembered with relief that as Daniel has weaned himself - just shy of a year old so much smugness for lasting that long - I can take as much sudafed and painkillers as I jolly well like. Hooray! No more martyr suffering!
It gave me insomnia! I made sure I hadn't got the caffeinated pills, just decongestant only, but a pill at bedtime meant no sleep! Lying there, feeling exhausted, but sleep was not there. For two nights I endured and then went to unmedicated nights. I slept, but I suspect I snored.
We're all running with it now. There's nothing that spoils a handsome boys face as a long yellow candle of snot hanging out, but like King Canute, I cannot fight the tide.
I thought I was on the mend. After all, it's not that bad a cold and it's been a week. The runny thickened up and started to ease....
Until last night. Woke up feeling like someone had skewered me through the ear with a sharp knife dipped in chilli oil. Made the mistake of rubbing my ear... I wonder if that's what a tazer strike feels like? The intensity of the pain!
Today my ear feels odd, less painful but it's giving me an odd echo, as if what I'm hearing on that side is happening a tiny fraction later than the other. My clearing nasal passages have refilled with truly vile yellow muck that mostly seems to be leeching in from my ear.
It's the one day of the week Joseph has no preschool or toddler group. Sometimes I like to get out with him, run a bit of his spare energy off in the great outdoors.
The forecast was for rain and more rain. That's what we have, with a helping of bright sunny patches to torment us, showing us the lovely day we could have had if the clouds would only push off.
We've been stuck in all day and the frustration is showing. The problem is, all the local indoor stuff we could go to - Joseph hates. He hates sift play, especially without a friend. To be honest, the way my ear feels today I don't think I'd enjoy the noise of soft play, but I'd happily suffer if it was what Joseph wanted to do. He hates most shops and isn't old enough to enjoy the inside bits of the local National Trust stuff.
It has culminated in me flopping on the sofa a lot - my head feels like porridge - and Joseph 'playing' with Daniel which as far as I can tell means him putting stuff on Daniels head and trying to push him around. Daniel has been alternately pulling all the shoes off the shoe rack (didn't bother putting them back last time), attempting to escape into the garden when it's been sunny enough to open the back door and making a grab for our box of stationary to try and eat the paperclips.
I need to rest, ideally just drink lots of tea and watch some pointless telly to take my mind off how awful I feel. Instead I have had to negotiate a cheese sandwich (stalemate) and listen to the relative merits of pull back tractor verses a toy aeroplane. Which is better for beating 'baddies'? Joseph's latest obsession - beating baddies.
We had a whole conversation about death this morning thanks to that. He wanted to know how long it would take to get better from being killed.

But I gave you Magic Stars!

Why did I not just go to the supermarket yesterday? Why didn't I just get up and go out while everyone else was mucking about?
I just fancied a slow bank holiday morning. I paid for that laziness today.
I don't usually take Joseph to the supermarket any more. Pain in the neck? That isn't the half of it. By the time we get to the freezer section I don't think there would be a single person in the shop who would think me unjustified in ramming him in one of the freezers, shutting the door and just walking away.
Today was no exception.
Was hoping to bribe him a bit - a treat from the bakery for good behaviour, let him have a few bits of 'his own shopping' and his own bag to pack at the tills. It's worked before.
Not today.
He  didn't want to get in the car, especially when he found out where we were going. Note to self - don't tell him next time.
He wouldn't get out of the car when we got there. I had to drag him out and he started whinging.
A few aisles in he started asking for one of his toys. I hadn't got a toy for him, he causes nothing but trouble when I let him bring a car, running it up and down every available surface and across fresh food as well if I can't stop him in time. He pays precious little attention to where he's walking at the best of times, when he's got a toy car he's a total liability. That's not to mention the inevitable fallout when he forgets, puts the wretched thing down and forgets where. One time someone went home with a generic looking blue matchbox car in their bananas. He said that's where it was put... but we never saw it again.
I digress. We had no toy car with us. He wouldn't take that for an answer and the whinge started. Boy can that boy whinge! If it were an Olympic sport....
I mentioned that if he stopped being so silly and calmed down then there might be a treat from the bakery in the offing. Those doughnuts he likes with the icing and the pink sprinkles?
He quietened down at last, but it did not last.
Why?
Someone came along with a trolley clearly as oblivious to their immediate surroundings as he was and he would have been squashed if I hadn't pulled him out of their way pretty sharpish.
What does he do?
Scream his head off, that's what.
Apparently I had 'hurt him'. Really? I thought I was saving him from getting hurt. He said I had hurt his finger. I hadn't touched his finger, I had grasped him by the shoulders and not even that firmly. In the end I concluded that he must have made a grab for my trolley just at the moment I was moving him from harms way and perhaps caught his finger.
It wasn't hurt at all - not even a little mark, but it didn't stop the massive tantrum from welling up. Tears, screams.....
My patience was tissue paper thin by this point. I warned him - calm down or no bakery treat.
He did not calm down and the crying just turned back to the constant flow of whinge about not wanting to be in the shop and wanting to go home.
I told him I'd had enough, no bakery treat for him. He didn't calm down.

I paid, left the shop and then had to manhandle him into the car as he had suddenly lost the ability to do it himself. Apparently I was being very unfair. And I just thought he wanted to get home!

We walked to preschool and I just kept my head down to get there quickly. Dropped him off, got home, made Daniel some lunch and unpacked the shopping, enjoying the whinge free house. Daniel went to sleep for his nap and.... quiet!
Shame it was only going to be for an hour, but I made the most of it nonetheless.

Time to pick up Mr Terror.

The whinge started almost from the get go.
It was impossible for him to carry all his pictures he had done. He could not manage to get his arms in his coat. He could not pick up his own lunch box. He put the pictures down right in the middle of the corridor for no good reason and then whinged when they inevitably got stepped on.
Teeth starting to grind....

We have a Tuesday ritual of stopping off at a little cafe near the preschool. I was in half a mind not to bother, but I fancied a coffee.
Bought Joseph his usual babachino and a latte for me. I got him some magic stars - didn't think I could go wrong with those - and some little wafers to share with Daniel and to dip in my coffee.
Joseph wants the wafers. Apparently I 'have' to share with him. I ask if he's planning on sharing the magic stars.
No.
Then he can't have a wafer.
This, I am told, is unfair.
I have grown rather hard hearted by now and I am not bothered by it being apparently unfair and Daniel and I enjoy the wafers.  Never mind that I've had to physically manhandle him into a chair as he's decided he wants one of the tall chairs by the window. We can't sit at those, they're too high to sit with a buggy next to them.
He wont finish his drink. It's too chocolatey. He ate all the flipping magic stars though, surely they're even more chocolatey? Guess I'll have to start asking them to leave the chocolate off the babachino again.
He asks for more food, as he's very hungry, I ask if he ate all his lunch at preschool and I am told that yes he did, his lunch box is totally empty. I ask if this is true and am told 'I would not lie to you Mummy.'
He was lying, he barely touched his lunch again. I refuse to buy more treats, he was lucky he got the magic stars.
We walk home and he's a total pain the whole way, running ahead and then dawdling and generally getting in everyones way.
We get home where he causes nothing but trouble, eats his lunch leftovers in seconds flat (why didn't he do that at lunch time) and caps it all off by shoving Daniel hard head first into the coffee table.

He is now upstairs sulking at how unfair it is he has been punished.
All I can think is that I bought him magic stars and all he's done is lie to my face and try and hurt his brother.
He's not coming down till Andy gets home.