Today was one of those days where you go “Well, this would make a good blog entry…”
… And not in a good way.
(Let’s back up a bit, shall we?)
Today began at 3am. Which is never a good way for a day to begin… not unless you’re catching a plane to someplace tropical, or they’re calling to let you know that you’ve just won a Nobel prize. I can assure you, I won no prizes today, and I am still very much in the middle of a snow storm. Today began at 3am because Lilian decided that it was a good time to wake up screaming.
You can’t really get mad at a 17-month-old when they wake up screaming. It wasn’t Lilian’s fault that she was all congested. Also, toddlers don’t tend to respond well to stern lectures about how you’d really prefer to be sleeping. You can, however, get mad at life, the universe, and everything else.
Which is a fantastic way to begin the day, let me tell you.
(Lilian fell back asleep eventually, but losing an hour plus of sleep at 3am never made anybody happier or more well-rested.)
I was supposed to go out with some coworkers after work today, so Kristian and I planned for me to take his usual daycare drop off so that he could take care of the pickup. I was quite pleased with myself for giving myself enough time to drop her off and still make it to work on time. I’d even packed her lunch the night before and everything. I got a little miffed when I realized that Kristian had unplugged my iPhone in order to charge his and never plugged it back in. I only had 1% of the battery life remaining, but I figured I could charge it in the car.
(Famous. Last. Words.)
Lilian and I got to daycare, the director of the center stopped to chat with us, and all of a sudden she said, “Is that…. pink eye?” Pink eye? Nooooo. I would never bring my kid to daycare with a highly contagious and totally icky… oh shit, that totally looks like pink eye.
Needless to say, we were not allowed into the building.
They told me that she could come back if she’d been on antibiotics for 24 hours, hint hint, take that baby to a doctor, hint. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just use my phone to make a quick call and schedule an appointment and… oh, yeah. Phone. I guess it wasn’t charging very well in the car, because it was dead. Deader than my chances of making it into work on time.
The doctor’s office is maybe a five minute drive from daycare, so I decided to drive straight there. It’s not like I could call them. Or call work. Or call my husband. I was pretty sure they opened up at 8am, so I had my fingers crossed that they’d squeeze in an emergency appointment for us.
Spoiler alert! The office does, in fact, open up at 8am. Unfortunately, none of the doctors start seeing patients until 9am. I threw myself on the mercy of the woman at the front desk, and she made us a 9:30am appointment. I stared at my phone in anger for another 15 minutes or so, until it finally turned on (I was charging it in the waiting room). At which point I finally got to let work in on the little secret about where I was.
Lucky for me, my bosses are both a) understanding and 2) parents of small children. Which is why they said, “I hope your daughter is ok, let us know how it goes,” and not “Pink eye twice in a few months?!? Yeah riiiiiight, get your ass into the office.” Kristian was working from home, so he drove over to help me so I could get a little bit of work done on my laptop.
There was one other patient in the waiting room, a woman who started telling me all about her children… Until we eventually got to the part of the story where her young son found her husband dead in their bed. Which was both 1) some necessary perspective on a day that wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things and b) totally terrifying. I think she was having a worse day than I was. She was ranting about how they messed up her appointment… and then she promptly fell asleep.
I don’t know if the woman at the front desk took pity on us, or if she was tired of watching Lilian run around the waiting room touching everything with her germ-infested hands. Either way, there was a cancellation and we got it. The doctor quickly crushed my dreams of putting Lilian on antibiotic ointment and then sending her back to daycare the next day. Viral pink eye. In my heart of hearts I knew that was going to be the case. He gave us a prescription to hold onto just in case, told us what to watch out for, and then suggested that we be very careful about washing our hands. And then he said, yeah, you should probably keep her home tomorrow.
(No pink eye for me, so far, although I suppose there’s still time.)
We spent the rest of the day hanging out at home, where Lilian alternated between napping and oozing. What can I say about working from home with a sick kid? I know that I’m very lucky to have the opportunity. I also know that my kid isn’t interested in cartoons. It’s… tiring.
My coworker’s plane got cancelled. Dinner is rescheduled for Thursday. It’s just as well, because at this point I’d much rather be in my pajamas anyways.
Kristian and I are both going to work from home tomorrow. We’re pretty good at working things out so that we can both get our work done. Lilian already seems a little better, so hopefully we’ll all be on the mend soon. I would really love a week where nobody got sick. But, at this point, I would settle for a couple of days.