So the Cave Troll climbed into bed with us Sunday night/Monday morning. I rolled over, touched his leg, WOKE UP and said, “Holy shit, who put the nuclear reactor in our bed because something is burning the fuck up!” No, I didn’t say that. I do recall saying, “Oh, fuck–how sick are you?”
103 degrees sick.
Last night, he was 103 degrees sick too–and I gave him some motrin and in two hours he was still 102.5 degrees sick, and thinking that medicine should only be given if it’s going to do a blessed fucking thing, I called the doc, and the doc said “Give him more other meds! And an ice pack!”
I said “He’s had one sort of med and he’s already wearing bag of frozen peas and carrots that will never see a dinner table!! ”
They said, “Well give him both sorts of meds, and other than that, it sounds like you know what you’re doing!”
This morning I had a slightly more sane conversation with a very nice man who assured me that the Cave Troll would feel like radioactive shit today, and possibly feel a little better tomorrow, with a chance of being able to survive school on Thursday.
But by then, Ladybug should be her own pudgy smiling bundle of nuclear waste, and then we start with the panic and the phone calls and the molested peas and carrots all over again. Uhm, yay?
It’s not that we haven’t gone through this before. I may have mentioned the one year when it was only Thing 1 & Thing 2 and Mate and me, and we all came down with the fucking hot-snot plague for an entire week. I remember that Big T got to go to his 1st grade Valentines day–and we were really pleased about that, because the next day, Mate stumbled out of bed to find T dressed with his back-pack, ready for the bus, sporting flushed cheeks and a fever of 102. I’ll never know how we made it that week–I think maybe nobody was eating or drinking, but I seem to recall Mate and myself each making one hallucinogenic wild-eyed trip to the store for more baby meds and something to drink that would make nobody throw up. And that, Ladies and Gents is as bad as it gets–really, I’ve been there.
But that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the Cave Troll, known for swathes of destruction and his hellbent quest for world domination, laying slack and fish-eyed, begging me for more ice for his head and asking me to get rid of his popsicle–he doesn’t want it. It’s gonna suck when Ladybug goes under–for one thing, she won’t just lay down on the couch. I mean now? I’ve got 170 pages of editing/revision under my belt. That’s hard to do when you’ve got a broiling 40 lb. growth attached to your lap. And seeing her suffer isn’t a lot of fun either.
(And my 500th post is coming up. I’m going stash diving or book sending again–start thinking of what you want. This time, I think it will only be sock yarn–I’ve got me lots!!!)
