Kris's Covid Pandemic Blog

I was pretty distracted when I wrote the other day so I wanted to finish the story of the sickness since I sincerely hope we are through it now. After the movie on Thursday afternoon James's temp was still high and he developed a stiff neck so I called the pediatrician nurse line. By the time they got back to me it was after 4:30 and she said with that combination of symptoms she really wanted him seen that day and suggested we make an appointment with the children's hospital urgent care. So he and I went there at 7:50 and Josh stayed with Max. That's probably the way we would have done it anyway but with Covid protocols only one parent was allowed in. Josh and I talked after this was over about how lucky we are that we really have had overall healthy kids. Max had very minor surgery when he was one to remove a benign growth in his neck that he was born with and James spent the first three weeks of his life in the NICU because he came early but other than that we have been

 One of the many things this pandemic has stolen from us: I can't just have a sick kid and stay home and let him sleep and check on him and feed him warm soup and let him get better. I mean...I can...and I am...but I can't do it without the worry of what if and wondering at what point we get a test, etc. Let me be clear: he's okay. He has a small temperature and complained of his tummy hurting and being dizzy so he went back to bed after breakfast. Where every time I check on him he acts like I am holding him hostage and not like he elected to go back to bed on his own. He has no cough and no other symptoms. If he rallies and feels better this afternoon, which I fully expect he will, I won't worry about a test because it's not like he's going to see anyone to expose even if it were Covid. So we are totally okay. I just hate that a sick day is ANOTHER thing that has to have this layer of crap added to it. It's been a LONG time since I updated...it's hard.

When I was a kid I had this (totally illegally copied on cassette tape from the library) audiobook of The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger. This book was formative for me for a lot of reasons and I actually prefer its sequel There's a Bat in Bunk Five, but one thing I remember is that she has to write a paper on the James Thurber quote that is the title for this post and her response is "I am never going to be calm enough to think this is funny." This is what I thought yesterday as we finally finished the writing assignment from hell and I stuck it on my bookshelf to find someday. As a friend said, if I were the sort of person who drinks I would have put it on the shelf with a bottle of bourbon. Given the state of my bookshelves it will likely be awhile before I find them again, but right now it's difficult to imagine being in a place where when I find them it will bring a "oh, remember how awful that week was" smile. So the writing assignment from hell

 I am sabotaging myself by not going in for an early bedtime. At least I'm aware of this? Been a rocky week in these parts. The feelings are BIG. James is all of a sudden very emotional and now Max is trying to out clingy him and it's been exhausting. It started with the worst writing assignment of all time I think. The first graders have been working on this nonfiction writing assignment for...well, it feels like approximately seven hundred years but it's been two weeks or more. This is one of those things that was broken down into endless steps. Reading about three animals was a step. Drawing a diagram of the chosen animal was a step. When it came to the research portion, they had to read some ebooks about their animal and write six interesting facts to put into their papers. It was exactly six. I know because on the paper we recreated when the first one got ruined there weren't exactly six slots for facts and we got called out on this. Then the actual writing happene