On Friday Olive came home from school coughing and with runny eyes. By evening she had a fever. She spent most of Saturday lying on the couch, moaning, with eyes half-mast, occasional taking breaks for Advil and an Albuterol treatment. I am so glad we bought a nebulizer instead of renting it, when Olive got that bad respiratory bug over the summer. It has now officially saved us from at least one ER visit.
Halloween took us by surprise. We'd assumed trick-or-treating would start after dark, but this year Northbrook went the Milwaukee route and did it in the middle of the afternoon. The doorbell started ringing at 3 p.m., and the children had to quickly don their costumes and get out there before all the good, peanut-free stuff was taken. I didn't even get pictures.
Olive and I stayed home, of course. At around 4 p.m. she spiked a fever, began wheezing and got the chills. Time for more Advil, more nebulizer, clean warm jammies and a nap. Olive and I got into the big bed where she promptly fell asleep on my chest. Occasionally she'd move a bit to make sure a knee was digging into my liver or to cough sputum more directly onto my face. We lay there for two hours, like St. Julian and the leper, and after Olive woke up she looked and sounded much improved. I had a suspicious tickle in my throat and feelings of pre-flu deja vu (do you all get that, too? The ominous feeling of familiarity that preceeds illness?). It occurred to me that this is the second Halloween in a row where Olive was too sick to trick-or-treat.
In the evening we set a mousetrap in back of the television set. Clover had been sniffing around back there and we suspected our autumn visitors had returned. We watched two DVR'd episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and during that hour we caught three mice. Each time one died, LB would set a new trap. Twenty minutes later we'd hear a snap followed by frantic scuffling, and then, nothing. Some children enjoyed this more than others. During the night we caught one more mouse, and in the morning Clover got to it first. LB found Clover slinking around with the trap in her mouth, tail dangling from her snout, and when he snatched the trap away from her, she growled. We think she believes she killed that mouse herself.
Today, Olive is back to chortling and gleefully tossing nearly-full cans of soda, while I'm miserable and shivering and sweating and having leg pains and coughing and feeling hot behind the eyes. And LB--between giving me back rubs and fetching my various pills and suspensions and making the children their meals--actually had the nerve to suggest I was laying it on a bit.
I suggested we nap together.




































