There are many levels of hell in parenthood....I know this because I'm mentally creating a 'scale'. Stretch marks are on the low end....your toddler throwing a wall-eyed fit in the middle of Target being mid-range....with the tippy-tip-top of the scale being a stomach virus, in the middle of the night, while your husband is out of town, and your baby needs her paci 3 times and wakes up at 5:45am. And I know this because I am now seeing the light after a near-death experience with the kind of virus that scrapes your insides out with a machete and shoots them out both ends of your body. That's all I'm going to say about that (already too much, I know). At least now I have the upper tier of my parenthood-hell-continuum mapped out.

On a slightly related note, I am reading (and by reading, I mean listening to on my iPod) Born to Run. It's a very interesting story about a 'running tribe' in Central America that plays this game where they run for 2 days, kicking a little ball back and forth. After a wild night of partying. Wearing a robe and wooden sandals. I either wasn't listening or haven't gotten to the part about the point of this running game (a side note: Paul says I was listening on 'shuffle' which means the chapters were not in order. and I didn't notice. ha:)....but I did hear the part where the author quotes a tribesman (or someone--- the details are not important) as saying this game is like the Game of Life......you can't control it and you can't predict what's coming, all you can do is adjust.

That's some wisdom there. Running must be good for your brain. And, If I hadn't lost most of my functioning brain in the virus-related events, I'd make some sort of analogy to my life. All I know is...I can relate. To the adjustment part and the lack of control part and the inability to predict part....not the 2 day run!