here at home
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Sep. 7, 2007
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more happenings
This week has been interesting. Very tiring! I rarely ever get sick, but I've been down for 3 days now. What happened, you say?
I do child care for a living. 'nuf said, right? This would seem like an easy task - I know lots of women who have 8 children all the time, but I can bet most of them don't have the state telling them exactly how to raise them with the threat of a 25,000 fine and jail time attached if they take one misstep. That's my life. Anyway, that's another topic.
So, I have one mom who has 4 kids. She's a single lady, God bless her, and her kids are ages 6, 4, 3 and 2. God bless her again, I would be certifiable. She doesn't like to miss work as it's her therapy - her oasis of pleasure in a life full of sibling arguments, dirty diapers, runny noses that get picked more than breathed thru, and piles of laundry. I understand her predicament, but there is only so much I can do to help. So this last week, her 3rd child came in with a sudden case of 'allergies' with symptoms of itchy goopy red eyes, runny green snot, coughing and sneezing. He's wiping snot and boogers all over my house. Hmmmm...Allergies, you say? We sterilize every one of the 50,000 toys in the place anyway. Well, 2 days later, child #2 has the same symptoms, but no goopy red eyes. Again, with the boogers and the bleach following. I think the toys are multiplying, though. Off to the doctor they go, who is anti-antibiotics and sympathetic to a mom who would do almost anything to NOT miss a minute of work, so naturally they come back with, 'it's allergies!'
Understand the dilemma here: I am looking at the first consecutive 3 days of total and complete rest - no kids - coming in 2 days (which was, consequently Thursday). I don't take holidays off, I don't take sick days, I don't get days off. She works 5 days a week, but rarely takes her days off together. When she has a day off, I have her kids replaced with a bunch of other kids. Wednesday rolls around and I wake up with allergies. Wow, those allergies were contagious? Who'da thunk! So I do what I can to fight it, and let the mom know, for the 200th time, "HE"S GOT A COLD!"
She says no it's allergies because he's not running a fever and heads off to work. Since i'm spineless, i allow this to occur. Thursday, my prized day off that has been a month overdue, comes calling and I'm running a 102 fever, and have a full blown head cold. Hmm...allergies, huh? So I talk to her today, and she's convinced i got the cold from someone else because her son didn't get a fever, so obviously it's a different set of germs. Mind you, everyone else i know has the stomach flu, which i have been great at not catching because i haven't invited them to share the symptoms in my house by picking their noses and wiping the contents everywhere. Sorry to be gross...we know it's true...kids invariably wipe whatever is on their hands onto whatever isn't moving, either with hopes of making it squeal or just concealing the evidence of their pleasurable mining expeditions. Since i don't TRULY have eyes in the back of my head, there's only so much i can do in the war on germs. So, every 4 minutes, they all line up in the bathroom and wash their hands - properly. and every time i catch them mining for green goopy gold, off to the bathroom they go, to wash their hands with more soap than necessary for the length of 'happy birthday' twice. you've never heard anything sweeter than a 2 yr old singing happy birthday with a forced vibrato to the bathroom sink while squishing a bar of soap between his fingers. all the while, i'm running around behind them, spraying sanitizing spray on everything they've touched, and i still catch a cold.
So now it's Friday night, and I missed the moms night out party i have made my annual tradition because i am so stuffed up i can't smell the dirty diapers in the pail, or taste the 'super hot chili' that the lady at the chinese restaurant assured me would melt my fingernails when i touched it. I expected to get the use of at least one nostril, but i got nothing from eating the whole tub. It will probably burn later, but really, in the whole scheme of things, I don't think it would hurt me too much to lose a few pounds now that i've eaten the whole super sized tub of Boy Scout caramel corn i bought the other day. I needed something to make me feel better since i couldn't get everything else on my list finished, thanks to these 'contagious allergies.'
thanks for reading! |
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• Sep. 8, 2007 - Untitled Comment
What a story! Sounds like a round of really
bad colds to me!
Michelle