The Way It Is

Spent all weekend inside with poor little Catherine who got sick Saturday morning and just kept getting sicker and sicker. There are few things I know for sure, but here are a couple of things that you can bet the ranch on....cash in the mortgage and put it all on red....these are SURE things I tell you. Here goes:

(a) Your infant/toddler/child will ALWAYS get sick just after the doctor's office has closed up shop for the day and all the doctors have left the building. In fact, you will be on the phone trying to get them and they can probably hear the phone ringing as they laugh and lock the door.

(b) Your infant/toddler/child's temperature will never be higher than it is at 4:30 am and they will also always wait until said time to throw up/choke up/ spin head 180 degrees and spit up peas. You will then be forced to decide whether to join all the drug deal gone bad shooting victims at the hospital emergency room or wait another 3 1/2 hours to call the pediatrician.

(c) You will call the Dr. and they will want you to come in. You will drag your sick child and your cross-eyed self out the door without a shower, hoping that you managed to at least brush your teeth, only to realize that you didn't so the smashed piece of gum in the bottom of your purse will just have to do. You will tell the Dr. all of the horrible symptoms and frighteningly high fever your child has had for 24 hours, only to have them look at your child now doing cartwheels and singing Miss Pattycake songs and then check her temperature to find it's 98.6. They will look at the child's ears/throat/nose as you're secretly hoping (and this is warped I know) that they will find SOMETHING to prove you are not a delusional liar. In other words, once you are at the Dr.'s office the child will be have been cured. It's a miracle.

Turns out that Catherine does have an ear infection, but I'm not kidding when I say that for 24 hours she had a 103-104 degree temperature, but once I met the Dr. at his office at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon, it was perfectly normal. Crazy.

I managed to get a good laugh out of it all though. They wanted to do a chest x-ray on her, so I carried her into the room and the nurse says, "Any chance you may be pregnant, Mom?"

Are you kidding me?

"MmmHmmm....pretty good chance, I think." She then sees that I look like I'm about to give birth any moment to a hippo and we both start laughing.

It was the only thing that was funny all weekend.