The Coughing Child

**Disclaimer- This post is NOT to offend anyone with children, if you take offense, I do apologize, but it needs to be shared**

Date night arrived with the hubby and it was my turn to select the dinner location. I decided on Olive Garden because I wanted a hot bowl of soup and a nice fresh salad. We waited the usual 20-30 minute wait for a table, due to the popularity AND cold weather of course.

We were seated in a nice cozy corner. I am so beyond happy to be here with hubby, relaxing, and getting ready to enjoy a nice warm soup and out of the cold weather. We are served samples of a new wine, hubby looks at me and can tell I like it, orders two glasses for us. It was romantic. I don't need a five star restaurant to enjoy myself. This is all I ever wanted. It was such a romantic night.

I noticed when we were seated there was a younger couple, maybe our age?, girl covered in tattoos, man dressed shabby, and a child, approximately six years in age. I have gotten spoiled by my friends' children, all well behaved and perfect angels in public places. To the onlooker, you would have thought the same about this child. That was until she began jumping on the seat of the booth. Normally, I wouldn't have been bothered, but on this occasion, I was seated on the side attached to her booth, so with every jump I was bumped a bit from my comfortable position. Hubby could tell I was getting annoyed, he reached across the table and grabbed my hand, I took a deep breath and calmed down.

We continued our conversation, only to be quickly interrupted by the child talking right into my ear. She had stood up on the booth and was talking directly into my ear! I turned and gave a horrible look to both her and her "parents" (I do feel bad for having to be nasty to the child, I mean, my God she is only a child and OBVIOUSLY hasn't been taught how to act in public). Her mother quickly yelled at her to sit down and she obliged. I thought that would be the end of it until I felt a small hand on my shoulder. Sheeeee's baaaccccck!!

A little more talking followed by one of the second worst things imaginable, a COUGH, right on my back (what is the first you ask? why a sneeze of course!). Completely disgusted at this point, I am a germaphobe for God's sake, I jumped to my feet and let out a disgusted noise. Hubby was frozen, not sure what to do. "Control your child please." What did the parents do? Nothing, the let the child continue jumping around while they enjoyed their dinner.

I understand that couples, especially young couples, don't get enough quality time together as a couple when they have children at a young age, BUT at the same time, why should my hubby and myself be punished just because they could not take an extra few minutes each time they were out in public to instill some manners in their children. I simply don't understand it. The more and more I see, the more hesitant I am to have children. Is it really that difficult to teach them simple things like this?

Tuesday Morning Thoughts

I was in bed by midnight last night and up around 5:00 a.m. My weekdays take a toll on me and I never let myself relax on the weekends, my only days off. During the week, I'm up early, drive for an hour to work, where I am the office admin, which means I'm a jill-of-all trade. I'm in charge of keeping our workers happy. We usually fluctuate from managing 40 people all the way to about 200 (since I've been here), depending on what projects we have going on. I'm in charge of getting those people paid, sick/vacation leave, maternity leave, coordinating project starts and ends as well as taking care of everything on the front in (PC breakdown and set up, troubleshooting, etc.). My days are pretty hectic and it seems like they go by quick for the most part. At the end of the day, I get my car from valet and drive for an hour to get home.

I'm exhausted by the time I get home, but I don't sit down. I figure out what needs to be done for dinner, start those preparations, and as dinner is cooking I begin to pick up/clean. I feed the dog, give him attention, stop to finish dinner. Serve dinner while watching tv. Most of the time I'm lucky and something non-news related is on and I can have a laugh while I eat my dinner. After dinner, I clean the dishes, pack up the left overs (if it is something I like I divide the leftovers between hubby and me and if not, hubby gets a heaping serving to bring to work the next day). By then my food has settled and I hit the gym for about an hour or two. I come home drained, shower and go to sleep. That is my routine mainly Monday through Thursday. Most of the time Friday and Saturday it fluctuates (no work on Saturday of course) and Sunday is my day to "relax" which is usually spent doing laundry and heavy duty cleaning.

Anyways, as I sat and thought about my hectic schedule I realized, when will we EVER have time for children. It seems near impossible to me at this point. Who knows, maybe one day I will calm down enough, become less of a control/organization/germaphobe freak, be able to let things go and concentrate on completing our family. Until then, I'll continue one with my craziness, wall and ceiling vacuuming and all!

Germaphobe

Happy Tuesday to everyone!! I know I have been a horrible, horrible blogger lately. I have been so tied up with life in general that I have not kept up with my duty of blogging. Hopefully I will be able to get back on track shortly and get you guys up to speed on everything.

Anyways, last night after I cleaned up the house, as always, I curled up in bed and grabbed my new issue of Shape magazine (normally I go for my Cosmo..Glamour or Vogue, but wanted to read something different). Jenna Fischer is on the front cover looking cute as always. I glance at the cover as I always do to cheat and get a sneak peek of what is within. Just as I was about to flip to the front page, the word "germaphobe" caught my eye. Naturally I flipped to the page that was next to it and began reading this woman's story. I will spare ALL of the details, honestly because it kind of made me ill to the tummy. The woman sounded a lot like me, maybe a little bit more extreme actually, taking every measure to avoid and/or destroy germs surrounding her. She took swabs from everyday items she touched but thought she protected herself from & had a doctor study them over a period of time.

Well, long article short, some pretty disturbing things were discovered. Vaginal and rectal yeast on the elevator buttons she touched everyday, fecal matter on just about everything that she came into contact with and swabbed. Large amounts of fecal matter on the children's' jungle gym at the park, but the most disturbing, her kitchen counter top. This lady is a vegetarian so had no change of raw meat contamination. The end result to the study of the secretly dirty counter top, her sponge. Where she thought it was clean, it was actually full of germs.

So, where do I leave you, besides with disgusting thoughts and probably the need to wash your hands a million times after reading this as I did? Well, I will pass along a couple of the tips I gathered from the article. You can always go pick up a copy and read the full article.

Tip #1: ALWAYS wash your hands after using the bathroom (duh!). You should lather your hands for at least 20-30 seconds and rinse with warm water. You should sing the "happy birthday" song at least twice during this process in order to assure you have killed all the germs. Make sure to pay attention to under your finger nails. When grabbing the paper towel to dry your hands (germs LOVE wet surfaces so make sure to dry thoroughly) use the paper towel to turn off the faucet and open the door to exit the restroom.

Tip #2: If someone sneezes by you, walk diagonally away from the sneeze. Also, the myth about holding your breath....not a myth at all! It takes a certain amount of germs to get you sick, so by you holding your breath and potentially keeping out so many germs, you can actually avoid getting sick! Crazy!

Tip #3: Counter tops should be sprayed or wiped down with Clorox or other anti-bacterial substances BEFORE AND AFTER meal preparations (yes, not just after!) in order to keep from contamination.

Tip #4: Use separate cutting boards for different types of foods (this is a given but still thought I'd mention it). You shouldn't use the same chopping board for meat as you do for your veggies.

Tip #5: Last but certainly not least, to keep your sponge from becoming a breading ground for all the nastiness, after each use, still in a bowl of water and place in the microwave for two minutes.

If any of you guys have any nifty tips for us germaphobes, please share!