Nurse Candy

So you know how the weather has been lately? One minute bright, sunny, and in the high teens, the next a disappointing grey, wet, and single digit mercury reading. Really Atmosphere, couldn’t you decide which way you want to go? Hormonal imbalance was the response I got and I found myself sticking a hand out the window each morning trying to decide my threads for the day.

Naturally enough, my 4 year old decides to join with the masses and sport a cough and dripping nose. It did not bother me initially as the rest of her little mates were similarly strutting the latest the germ industry was sending down the Spring runway. Life continued to roll along without any major disruptions beyond the occasional snot goo sleeve-wipe.

Unfortunately, as you would have it, my little one, being the trendsetter that she is, decided to beat her mates and develop a fever. This had the effect of bringing our well-oiled drop-you-at-school-while-mom-goes-to-work schedule to an abrupt halt.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for giving lots of stay-up-through-the-night-hand-holding-over-puke-bowl type support when she is sick, nevertheless, it did not stop that niggling feeling from bubbling under my skin, knowing full well that I was going to have to deal with an extra-whiney sick child needing home rest while having to juggle a full time job that seems to be just as needy and whiney. And it sure didn’t help knowing that Himself was wine tasting at some sunny Californian vineyard on a week-long business trip at that very same time as I was wiping vomit off the floor.

What can I say? I’m thankful for result-oriented bosses who are more concerned with the quality of work than having my face in the office and the latest technology has to offer in terms of remote access and teleconference facilities. Between medicine feeds, lots of back stroking, coaxing, and temperature taking, I managed to keep up with work by waking at 6am to be at the computer and staying up till late hours to catch up with emails. Conference meetings were taken behind a closed study and by shoving a new DVD saved for an occasion just like this one to distract the sick one. It did work in my favor that I was dealing with multiple time zones and let me tell you, it is a rare thing for me to sing the praises of multiple time zones.

We finally saw the back of the fever after five days of house arrest. Cabin fever descended on both of us and we were raring to venture back to normality. We missed the outside world and in turn, the outside world missed us. We went back to our normal routines and were glad to see our friends and workmates (mine, not kidling’s) again.

And Himself came home at the tail end of it all, and in his own way, armed with eight bottles of Californian wine that he managed to wrangle past customs security check, made my world tick at the right pace again.

All is now well.

Until probably the presentation of the germ industry’s Summer collection.