Ugh, what a day. R has come down with what M continues to have. C & I are living on borrowed time I guess. M is fussy, restless and phlegmy, and she sneezes double-barrel snot, then smears it all over her face.

R took the morning shift with her while I did chapel and tried to scrape some work together, and I took the afternoon.

I wish I could say I felt like a little quilt scrap in the hands of the Great Quiltmaker; it would sound so Julian of Norwich of me. Alas, sour dishrag is more like it. At any rate...

• Just one of the complications of life: used to be, when I got sick, I took a sick day. Now if any of five people get sick (M, M's caregiver, C, C's caregiver, or me), I have to take a sick day. Thank God for a good policy and flexible workplace. How do people do it otherwise?
  
  Also, everytime one of us gets sick, R and I get that same dread and anxiety, like our life is totally unmanageable. But here's progress! This time, we are philosophical about it. We know the chaos will end.
  
  
• Chapel went well and is getting to be fun as I do it more. I think children are the hardest "audience," harder even than youth.
  
  Every time I lead chapel for C's class. I catch her in the corner of my eye and get the strongest feeling that I am watching myself at her age. I don't have this experience any other place.
  
  
• C has inherited my irrational fear of bugs. I was dropping her off at daycare when a huge cricket jumped in the open door and landed on the back of the seat in front of her. She went from oh, a cricket, well those just hop around and don't sting to screaming fit and get this thing off me! bloody terror! R said he could hear her all the way down the street at our house.
  
  I think the wasp incident did it. At preschool last week she got whacked by a small tree branch as the class was walking to the playground and she came unglued because she thought something had stung her.
  
  I try to be breezy around her, but she's a smart girl and knows it's all an act. I didn't have a wasp sting as a formative experience, just big-ass tree roaches that found their way into our old drafty house growing up.
  
  Sometimes... at night... I can still see them flying around my bedroom...
  
  Wow, I just literally shuddered at the memory.
  
  
• This afternoon I caught M doing the twist while checking out her reflection in the glass fireplace screen. No new steps, but she's starting to get clapping, and for those in the Colbert Nation--I kid you not--she imitated his "fly hands" gesture from the other night. Yes, she's one of the heroes. Or an evil genius.

And a snippet of a poem:

Nobody knew,
that sunny December breakfast in our home
was our last supper with you:
scrambled eggs pulled, runny, off the stove,
they popped and sizzled on the way to our plates;
biscuits, dropped by careful spoonfuls
onto a sheet of parchment,
then drenched with honey and jam;
and clementine oranges.
You praised the way they peeled,
so easy, no mess,
and I felt a child's pride.

This time each year
I buy more, another crate of memories
and never check the price.
I dig hard nails through the rind
and the sour fragrance stays with me
long after the sweetness is gone.



And now?
TIME FOR BED.