Strange Conversations with Strangers

This morning Lexi woke up with a fever.

On an ordinary Sunday, this wouldn't throw too big a wrench in the works, but today happened to not be an ordinary Sunday.  Chris and I were both scheduled to teach, and since he was going to be teaching adults and I was going to be teaching 4 & 5 year olds, it was pretty obvious which lesson was going to be easier for a last-minute substitute to put together.  (The ease of convincing a last-minute substitute to teach 4 & 5 year olds is something entirely different, by the way.)

So I started down the list of willing substitutes and promptly discovered that there aren't a lot of people who answer their phone at 8:00 on a Sunday morning.  After hanging up on several voicemails and answering machines, I finally got through to someone who didn't already have a class to teach.

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief and putting away the phone list, the phone rang.

Me: "Hello?"

Caller: "Did someone just call my house?"

Me: "Who is this?"

Caller: "Who is this?"

Me: "This is Allison Ebert."

Caller: "Did you call my house?"

Me: "I've been making a lot of phone calls this morning, so I may have.  Who is this?"

Caller: "Did you call me?"

Me: "I'm sorry, I really have no idea.  I don't have Caller ID, so unless you tell me who you are, I can't tell you if I called you or not."

Caller: "Well, I'll give you a phone number.  555-5555.  Did you call me?"

Me: "Okay, that doesn't help.  I didn't memorize all the numbers I called.  If you could tell me who you are, I'll be happy to tell you if I tried calling you or not."

Caller: "I'm not telling you my name."

Somehow we finally got off the phone.

Without her ever telling me her name.

As much as I'd like to apologize for giving this anonymous paranoid phone police lady a complex on what might have otherwise been a very pleasant Sunday morning, I'm too entertained by the bloggability of our conversation.

Our Own Little Peggy Ann McKay

We've had a mysterious illness in our house the last couple of days.  It seems to flare up whenever the subject of something which could potentially be perceived as unpleasant by an 8-year-old comes up.  Church, for example.  Or school.

But not so much when going sledding or playing the Wii are mentioned.

Funny how that works.

The thing is, we're on to her.  She may think she has us fooled, what with all the sympathetic hugs and the "I'm so sorry you're not feeling good.  Maybe you should go lie down", but she's wrong.  In fact, I've discovered as a parent that the believability of a medical complaint is directly disproportionate to the number of times that complaint is expressed within an hour.

And also to the degree of bounciness in the child's body as they issue the complaint.

But I'm never telling my kids this.  The last thing I want to do is teach them how to be better liars.

Tick...tick...tick...

Last night at 10:30 I told Chris I was just going to read one more chapter and then I’d turn off the light. Two minutes later a small person named Ellie knocked on our door and announced, “Um, I'm really sorry but I just threw up on my bed.”

And so it begins.


A moment of peace in the middle of a raging storm


The poor girl is so sick. She was tossing her cookies every 10 minutes for three hours. After that it got a little better, but she’s still struggling to keep anything, even Pedialyte, down. Thankfully, she has developed good aim, and The Throw-up Bowl (which we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to use for food for going on ten years now) is always close by.

And, amazingly, her sisters slept through the whole ordeal. Somehow my children have developed that uncanny, but incredibly useful, ability. No matter who’s doing the heaving, or how horrendous it is, the other two always manage to sleep through it.

But we all know that the stomach flu is like a time bomb. I’m just waiting to see who will be unfortunate enough to get in the way when it goes off next.

Please let it not be me...

Woe is me

Well, our battle with swine flu isn’t over yet. This time it’s me. I’ve been fighting what I hoped was just a really bad cold for a few days, but yesterday I was hit by the stampeding pigs. And knocked completely flat. And the worst part was that Chris was in CA all day for Walnut Village’s open house-meet & greet-schmooze-event. So it was just my miserable tissue-clutching self and the girls.  For the whole day.

And they were awesome. They fed themselves, entertained themselves, colored me pictures, and stayed out of my way all day long. I never once had to get after them for anything, and when I asked them to pick up after themselves, they did it without complaining. Maybe I should be sick all the time.

Ellie was my own personal nurse. Apparently she watched me closely the whole time her sisters were sick, and acted accordingly. She made sure I had plenty of fluids (“Okay, Mom, after you finish your juice, then you need to drink some water, because water is good for you”), a comfy place to chill (“Here, Mommy, let me fluff your pillows”), and a teddy bear, which I was required to carry with me everywhere I went.

Today Chris went to work late and came home early so I wouldn’t have to leave the house to get the girls to or from school. Isn’t he wonderful? He has to go to CA again tomorrow, so he’s doing what he can for me tonight to make up for it. Not that I’m taking advantage or anything ;)

I do not recommend H1N1. Not that anyone has much control over it – you’ll either get it or you won’t – but I highly recommend doing all that’s possible to avoid it. Get your shots, cover your cough, wash your hands, all that good stuff.

And you should probably stay away from my house for a while. We’ve going a little over a week between cases thus far, so who knows how long this will last. But right now I’m going to go curl up in bed with lots of blankets and a good book. Vicki’s book order arrived today, so I now have the rest of the Percy Jackson series. That should get me through tomorrow, I think.

Stay healthy, people.

Stupid pigs

We’ve been quarantined for going on 5 days now. Well, Lexi has, but really, when you've got a sick kid you don't get out much. And we had 3 days of quarantine with Vicki a week and a half ago.

Swine flu. Oh, yeah.

Actually, if this is the dreaded H1N1 (which it must be because apparently normal seasonal flu has not hit Oregon yet) then it’s not that bad. I do realize that people have become deathly ill from this virus, but for us it’s been no worse than the seasonal variety. My kids get high fevers as a general rule, so 104 degrees, while uncomfortable, is nothing to panic about around here.

I completely understand and respect the school’s rule that kids can’t come back until they’ve been fever-free (fever being defined as 100 degrees or above) for 24 hours without the aid of medication (does that include the parents?) I don’t want my kids catching something from someone else’s kid, and I would feel awful if I knew my kids had been spreading germs around the school (more than usual, that is.) I don’t send them to school when they’re sick, period, and I expect others to show the same courtesy.

So if, when the temperature has been normal for most of the day and we’ve spent the whole day assuming she’ll go back to school tomorrow, the temperature goes back up to 101 degrees, then of course she stays home the next day. But when, that next day, it goes to barely 100 degrees but she feels absolutely fine, it becomes an unhappy experience for all involved.

Cabin fever, big time. But she’ll be back in school tomorrow. If I have to simply plead ignorance by not taking her temperature all day long, so help me she’ll be back in school.*

Sadly, all I can think of now is: two down, one (or, heaven help us, three) to go.

*We all know I'm kidding, right? I really have checked her several times today. Totally normal. Well, normal for this house, anyway.

3 down, 2 to go

Vicki has strep.

Want to take bets on who gets the next round of antibiotics?

Don't come over for a few days.

My "I told you so" moment

It was bound to happen. With illness in the house, it's only a matter of time before someone else catches it. Early this morning Lexi woke up crying that her throat hurt. When I checked her temperature, it was 102. So I dosed her up on Tylenol, turned on Kung Fu Panda downstairs (thank you Netflix) and crawled back into bed.

When we all got up this morning, she seemed fine. But, hot on the heels of my own sore throat, I wasn't convinced. So I called the doctor's office and related my tale to the friendly advice nurse, who said she thought it would be a good idea if we went ahead and had a test done, since we already had strep in the house. Thankfully our clinic is open on Saturday mornings, so we were able to get an appointment with no problem. It wasn't our doctor, but we'd seen Dr. D. before, so we were okay with that.

Dr. D. took one look at Lexi, bouncing around the room just being Lexi, and I think he pretty much made up his mind then and there that this was a case of overreactive mother, as opposed to an actual medical condition. But, nice gentleman that he is, he listened to me explain (again) why we were there and why I hadn't waited another day or two to see if she was actually sick, which is what I would have done had I not just been diagnosed with strep. He checked her over and did the dreaded swab, which I purposely did not explain to Lexi before we went. Then he said, "Well, it'll be about 10 minutes!" and left us. I could tell he was feeling pretty positive that it would be negative.

10 minutes later he came back in looking slightly dejected. "She tested positive," he said gruffly.

Ha HA!

To his credit, when I mentioned that we might be back again in a couple of days because I had two more kids at home, he said if they showed the same symptoms to just call and they'd call in a prescription for us. Now he trusts my judgement, see?

Quarantine update

It seems like everyone's better now. I hope I'm not jinxing things by announcing that on the internet. Everyone was back at school today, and I got loads done around the house to make up for Monday, when I didn't do anything.

The downside to this is that we apparently didn't quarantine ourselves soon enough. I started a new babysitting job last week, watching the baby of Vicki's K/1st grade teacher. I had her here all day Thursday, when Ellie first came down with the fever. Now baby Violet has a fever. I feel terrible, even though I know it's not really our fault. Whatever the girls had, I'm sure they picked up at school, and since Violet's mom teaches at the same school, she may have gotten it from her and not from us, but still...

On the upside, though, that meant no extra kids today and only one extra kid tomorrow, so I can finish my Christmas shopping and maybe even get some things wrapped and under the tree!

We're in quarantine (or possibly should be)

Yesterday all three girls had fevers. This is something entirely new - they've never all been sick at once. Lately it's just been one at a time with a few days in between, or maybe two at once, but all three? We're in uncharted territory here. So no one went to school today. We're hanging out and watching movies all day long. Actually, everyone seems fine today, which is okay with me, but I'm just waiting for the grumpies to set in, as they inevitably will. Wish me luck.

As long as they get it all over with before Christmas I'm happy. Last year everyone was throwing up at Christmas, so anything's better than that!

All by my se-e-elf...don't wanna be all by myself anymore...

Chris went to Disneyland yesterday. Okay, so not actually Disneyland, but right across the street. He's doing Construction Administration on a project called Walnut Village, which is located pretty much in Disneyland's backyard. He goes down there overnight every other week. I had all these grand plans for my night alone. We always have a girls' movie night when Dad's gone - movies that Dad is happy to miss. So I was going to start the movie early, get the kids in bed as soon as it was over (I was optimistically shooting for 7pm here, but would've been happy with 7:30 or honestly even 8:00), clean up the kitchen, and then fold some laundry while I watched The Office. Then I was going to curl up with a bowl of ice cream and hot fudge sauce, watch whatever else was on TV or else just read a book without any interruptions, and then go to bed early myself.

I got half of all of those things done.

Except the movie. We did make it right to the end credits of Charlotte's Web before Ellie threw up spectacularly all over our new living room floor. How do single parents do it? You need one person to hold the sick child and keep them from contaminating the rest of the house and household and another person to clean it all up. There was just me, and Vicki and Lexi huddling in the farthest corner the could possibly get to, in record time, I might add. They helpfully told me, "Ellie has some in her hair!" and "I think it's in your shoe, Mom" as Ellie, confused about what on earth had just happened to her, tried to climb into my lap, stinky jammies and all. I stripped her and hauled her up to the bathtub, where she gleefully played for half an hour while I mopped up the floor and covered the house with a fine mist of Lysol. Then I had to rinse her off, drain the tub (you know why), fill it back up, and wash her. Throughout all this she was playing and singing - "Charlotte's Pig, la la, Charlotte's Pig" - and showed no signs whatsoever that she had just tossed her cookies. And meanwhile I had to convince Lexi and Vicki that yes, they really did need to go to bed, and no, I couldn't tuck them in or get their flouride pills or get them drinks of water, or, for that matter, touch them, really. I miss my other half.

Thankfully, the upside to this is that Ellie is totally fine today. She never threw up again, although she did wake up twice in the night to go potty. But it was a quarter to nine before I got her washed, dried off, and in bed, and then we had to make one more potty run (of course). So I watched half of The Office while I folded one load of laundry. Then I did the bare minimum in the kitchen and took a shower because I just felt contagious. I didn't get to bed until almost 11:00 and I didn't get my ice cream. I don't know how single parents do it. I do not ever want to find out. I have incredible respect for anyone raising children alone and remaining sane (at least as sane as I am, which isn't necessarily saying much, but still...) And I don't want Chris here just so I have someone else to clean up vomit. I missed having someone to hug me and tell me that it's going to be okay, and even if I end up being up all night long cleaning, bathing, and calming a sick child, the sun will come out tomorrow. I can tell myself that, but he does it so much better. It's the moral support, the companionship, and someone to laugh with about the older girls' reaction to Ellie's explosion.

I'm glad he's coming home tonight. :)