Careful What You Wish For...

When your first child enters kindergarten, it's all about new adventures and wondrous excitement. Ok no, no it isn't. Not if you're freakishly overattached to your 5-year-old and the very thought of sending her to hang out with strangers for eight full hours a day for the first time since you became anyone's mother gives you hives the size of grapefruits and makes things like McDonald's commercials where parents get to eat french fries with their preschoolers perpetually and eternally send you in search of a Zoloft pill the size of a Volkswagon to gnaw on even though you've forever sworn off all drugs that can't be obtained via the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru or a box with a spigot in your refrigerator. In that case, it's all about angst and loss and regret and the cruelly incessant speed-of-light flight of years like sand through a leaden sieve, as in one minute you're chewing your labor coach's arm off just to distract yourself from the most ridiculous white-hot pain you wouldn't wish on anyone (except maybe your impregnator) and inventing curse words in languages you never knew you knew, but then you blink and, bango, public school is stealing her away from you forever. (If this is getting to you at all, do yourself a favor and never ever ever listen to the Abba song from Mamma Mia entitled "Slipping Through My Fingers" unless you happen to be the proud owner of a that Volkswagon-sized Zoloft I mentioned. Then there's "Ribbons Undone," by Tori Amos...I'm just warning you...)

Oh I'm mostly kidding (she's lying). It's been almost four weeks now, and I'm totally fine (she's overstating), I can't even remember the last time (yeah she can) when I sank to my knees in a lake of my own bitter tears as the bus pulled away and all the other parents slowly moved away and avoided all eye contact. It's been ages (days)!

Alright, so you get my point, I've found the whole kindergarten thing a bit challenging, but I was well under way with the agony months ago when she graduated from preschool, got the head start, and now I'm pretty good. And this is how I know.

Grace is home today with a bad cold and I'm...well, people, it's totally cramping my style! (Hands over mouth in shock.) This is the deal, she started honking and coughing and sputtering last week, running a low-grade temp, and I did all the right stuff, took her to the doctor, not once but twice over the course of a few days just to make sure I was being neurotic enough, and was assured, not once but twice, no strep, no pneumonia, no ear infection, no flu. (Is this sounding familiar? Then this isn't your first visit to my parlor, is it? I so love you guys...) So even though she was still coughy and sputtery yesterday, I sent her to school, doctor said ok to go.

And then what happens? Around noon I'm picking up my boy from preschool and my cell phone rings. "Hello Mrs. Stroh-Simon, this is the school nurse, I have Grace here...do you know she has a fever?"

Ok, so that sounds suspiciously like the question the officer asks when he pulls you over. "Do you know how fast you were going?" or worse "Do you know why I stopped you?" or much worse "Have you had anything to drink today?" Was there a right answer? Of course there was, and I gave it up right away,

"Oh dear me, NO!"

And it was the truth, I really had no frickin idea she had a fever, and here's why. Any of you own one of those ear thermometers? Excuse me, tympanic membrane thermometers? I have owned several of varying costs. Well here's the deal, apparently you have to buy one that's hospital-grade and costs about as much as your car to get an accurate reading. I stick the thing in the same ear over and over again, usually my own so as not to wear out its welcome in the children's ears, and it gives me a range anywhere from 89.8 to 101.9 and back again, never the same reading twice. So what am I supposed to do, take an average? What about an old fashioned oral thermometer, you ask? It does not fly, the only thing I can figure is that my daughter thinks it's a lethal weapon and that holding it under her tongue is going to trigger the secret spring-loaded hypodermic spikes to pop out of it. (What I love most about children is the trust...) And then there's that tried-and-true, ever accurate way...let's just say that my kids have an amazing spider sense, the minute I walk into the room hiding one of those trusty little devices they immediately affix themselves to the ceiling like that jumpy cartoon cat, you all know the one I mean, claws into the plaster, couldn't get them down with a crowbar, believe me...

Anyway, so no, I didn't entirely know she had a fever. But now I know I'm a bad mommy and I'm going to get a reputation as one of those mothers who does crazy shit like send their kids to school with whooptheria or Martian death flu or teradactyl pox or whatever else is waiting to snatch them up prior to the invention of the life-saving vaccine that will eradicate these evils and make the world safe for pharmaceutical millionaires everywhere, AND WE WILL ALL THANK GOD THAT WE CAN FINALLY SLEEP AGAIN...don't get me started...nevermind, I'm already started...but that's another day, another blog post...

My point (and, like Ellen DeGeneres, hero of comic relief heroes, I do have one) is that I have to keep Grace home today, and, like I indicated several digressions ago, I'm like...hmmmm, this is a little bit of a pain in the ass. Here I am with Calvin safely ensconced either at preschool or with his many home-based service providers (aka miracle workers) several hours a day receiving the kind of teaching and stimulation that I can only give so much of before I spontaneously combust...all those hours a week to try and make a living, continue my unceasing efforts to keep the home base from becoming a smoking crater, and then there's the time for uninterrupted blogging. I mean people, that's not hard to get used to. I know! After all that fussin and weepin and hollerin, the puddle at the bus stop, the whole thing. Oh how the worm begins to turn!

I consider this shift to be very good news, meaning that I am not as far gone as I once suspected. Relatively.

Ok, I know, I hear you, I am so gone...see that little streak out there in the distance? That's me. Gone.

But I will be back, everybody's got to go back to school some time, come hell or whooptheria.