Tiny Hiney, Big Fear

We've been home sick this week.

I know, I know, home all week and not much blogging to show for it.

But it's been that kind of sick where each and every daughter (I count four through bleary eyes) needs my constant presence round the clock.

Round the clock, people.

Grace, our 4-year-old, is not even sick. But she's clingy because it rocks her world to see her big sisters and her baby sister sick and the all-powerful mommy (whoo-hoo, that's me) gimping around without benefit of Vicodin.

Anyway the clinginess. I completely and utterly understand that many fears are irrational. They don't have to be fever-induced to be so. And just because they're irrational does not mean they aren't real fears. Or, maybe they are scarier precisely because they aren't rational. There's no scaring (or explaining) away an illogical fear, now is there?

Grace's particular phobia this week is falling in the toilet. To my knowledge she has never actually done so. Also, she's not easily grossed out, so it's unclear what this fear is about. Again with the irrational, and why go there? So we hauled out the little toilet-topper seat for her tiny hiney. It enables me to be with another feverish child or three instead of holding Grace steady on the throne.

Which of my fears are huge and nonetheless irrational? What crutches (Dutch Brothers latte, anyone?) and elaborate detours ("creative procrastination," phone call avoidance, compulsive thumb twiddling... anyone?) mark me as completely beyond reason on the way to resolution of my most likely normal problems? Most likely normal, right?

How small would the actual feared outcome be if exposed to the light of rational thinking?

Yeah, I don't really want to find out either.