Last week

This past week was not the greatest ever here.  Out of the five usual days of school, we had one holiday and three early-out days.  That one holiday, last Monday, was useful.  We ran a few errands and cleaned the house.  But early that evening, Tim started feeling ill, and by about 9pm he was tucked into bed with chills and fever. He has only just started feeling better this afternoon.  That means he missed four work days plus all those glorious early-out days.

On Tuesday, I dropped Jonathan and his friend off at school and things were just fine, until 3:40 when, during a meeting with a student I advise, I got a phone call from my boy letting me know that his art teacher was sick, and I needed to pick him up.  So the meeting ended.  

On Wednesday, I cancelled my two afternoon meetings to make space for the early-out day.  After a few hours of working from home, Tim stumbled into the kitchen and groggily asked if I knew what I was going to ask Jonathan's teacher at our parent-teacher meeting in just a few minutes.  Dang.  I forgot.  So I did the parent-teacher thing on my own.  

On Thursday, we had freezing rain.  We don't get freezing rain in this part of the country.  Snow?  Yes.  Rain?  Yes.  Hail?  Yes.  Tornadoes, golf-ball sized hail, or freezing rain?  No.  That's for Texas.  But on Thursday, we had freezing rain.  Jonathan discovered the freezing rain first, as he was walking down the driveway on his way to school, and without any warning, ended up sitting hard on him bum.  I did the whole sympathetic mom thing and got some rock salt out of the garage to sprinkle over the little frozen puddle where he had slipped -- and discovered that the entire driveway was a sheet of ice.  As was the sidewalk. All the 3/4 mile to school.  And then the neighbor up the street came sliding down to our house on the polished ice sidewalk, and I could barely make my way back up our driveway to put the rock salt away, and I realized that this was the kind of day where I should stay in my house, in my bed.  But nobody bothered to cancel school (they didn't know better, because we don't get freezing rain here).  So we slid all the way to school, and then I had to get back, sliding all the way.  (And man, were my quads sore after all that sliding!)  And I decided that the next time we have an ice storm, I am cancelling everything.  Everything.  

On Friday, Jonathan woke up with a sore throat.  No!