Home Sickness

When we get sick at our house, like we’ve been over the past few days, I can almost guarantee the following four events:

1) It will be during a weekend or holiday or natural disaster which prevents any medical personnel from being available to diagnose our children. On Saturday morning, our younger daughter woke up with a fever at the precise moment the doctors at the pediatric clinic teed off at the golf course.

2) Our children will have no distinguishing symptoms, other than a fever. We never had the kids who would tug at their ears with infections; we had the child who, without so much as a sniffle, went straight to pneumonia without passing go or collecting $200.

3) The mystery illness will affect at least two of the four of us, usually striking both of the girls. This morning, our older daughter woke up with her sister’s fever and for those of you keeping score at home, it was still a good 24 hours before any medical facility opened up for business (except for the emergency room and calling 911, both of which seem a little extreme for a cough and low-grade fever).

4) Our little llamas will become extremely sweet and want you to hold them constantly. This is actually the one pleasant by-product of illnesses around here. I get to snuggle with my babies who most of the time now are too grown up for that sort of thing (or think they are).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got colds to starve and fevers to feed and llamas to hold.