Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been a pretty horrific week, but one can not post misery on the day of love, so here instead are things for which I am grateful (see if you can find the gems of bitchery hidden within the gratitude):

1) My husband. I am so lucky to love and be in love with my husband, since we are pretty inextricably linked. Forget vows, having 4 kids with someone will really bind you to them. So, I am very grateful for my husband, and I love him more than I can say, trite as that sounds. Even when he forgets to turn on the baby monitor so he can hear the baby and let me sleep for the first time in days. Even when he tries to weasel out of helping take sick kids to the doctor. Even when I am awake for the 32nd time at night and climb back into bed and see him sleeping soooo peacefully, sleeping like I haven't slept since 2005, I shit you not. Even. Then.

2) My children. I love them so much, and besides their own funny wonderful little selves, they have made me into a much kinder, more patient person (this is me being kind and patient, really). They make me see what matters. Just when I think running naked into the snow and never coming back is the only logical response to my life at the moment, one of them makes me laugh and put my clothes back on. Because who needs to see that, really.

3) My mother. I've always felt close to my mother, but having her here makes me realize how much I missed her when we were far apart. She listens, she steps in when I'm about to plunge right over the edge, she's an extra set of hands with the kids, and she's tolerant of my incessant mockery of her. Plus she does laundry. I really, really love her for doing laundry.

4) My friends. When life starts ganging up on me, my friends listen to me vent and never say that I'm a crazed madwoman, even when I clearly am. They let me take the edge off my all-too-frequent fury at events (and people) outside my control, so my husband and children get a slightly less sharp version of myself.

5) Health. Boy twin spent a night in the hospital this week for RSV with pneumonia, and it really made me appreciate that all of the people on this list and I are generally healthy. Minus debilitating sleep deprivation, of course. Because I couldn't post without pointing out that what I thought was tired a week ago was a fucking Caribbean vacation compared to the soul-crushing, bone-searing agony of staying up for nearly 36 straight hours in the hospital with a sick baby on top of 7 months of grossly inadequate rest.

I'm back, baby! Happy Valentine's Day to you all!