Where’s my check, Tom Bergeron?

Jack is having his first sick day.

After last night’s tossing and turning and punching and kicking (he manages to get both Robby and I at the same time so that Robby is groaning, “Uhhhmnf!” While I’m moaning, “Ow! My eye!”)– he wasn’t in any better shape then when he’d gone to bed (the first time).

There’s an inherent pressure amongst the preschool parents… and an unspoken understanding that one of the Big Taboos is sending your sick kid… Jack was flushed with no fever but with running nose and hacking, phlegmy cough and watery eyes. I called his school and told his teacher Jack wouldn’t be in today. Then called my supervisor and texted my boss (because, of course, today would be a day I was supposed to meet with them both).

Now Jack’s in comfy sweats while I’m still in a bathrobe and we’re both staying in. The living room looks like a bookstore exploded (assuming that said bookstore also sells wooden pretend food and little cars).

The highlight (I hope) of the day came with our comedy routine in the kitchen… My boss had called and while he was on one phone, the other phone rang. I’m trying to move across the kitchen to see who it is when Jack and Philbin come barreling through and run into me. I trip and, in a vain attempt at not crushing my small son or smaller dog, grab the freezer door handle. The door swings open, knocks me in the head on the way down where I land on the Jack (the pup escapes, barely). I don’t know what hurts more– my head? my elbow? my knee? Jack bursts into tears (the trauma of his mother hurtling out of the heavens toward him will, no doubt, come up in therapy down the road) and I cry, too… because I’m laughing. I hang up on Boss while the answering machine kicks in at some extreme volume to alert me that the caller has hung up.

Somehow the glamour of a sick day when I’m NOT sick is lost in Jack’s running nose, my new bruises, and the thought of having to put the living room back together at some point.

That Jack is trying to kill me isn’t lost on me, either.