It’s cold out.  There’s an icy wind blowing in around my back door to prove it.

Sweet Hubby has gone to work at job # 2 for the day and it’s just me and Hurricane Owen today.

We both have colds again.

Nothing serious, just a nuisance.  For me the biggest irritant isn’t the cough, it’s the joints.  Anything that causes my immune system to become active at all seems to send millions of stupid little soldiers coursing through my system attacking anything in their path, whether it’s the invading virus, or say, my knee joints.  My immune system can’t tell the difference.

Interestingly, my sister has just been referred to a rheumatologist as well.  Between my two aunts and us, we could be a study group.   We seem to have something up with the women on this side of the family.  Maybe they’ll name a syndrome after us.  Something catchier than “Systemic Auto-immune disorder”.  I was whining to an ex-boyfriend, who opined that this was Karma’s way of balancing the scales a little, since without some small impediment, the Botari women would be a frightening force to be reckoned with.  (He’s the only one to have met all of us.)

Footnote: I have three significant “exes”.  I’m still friends with each of them.  (We lived across the hall from the most significant one for the first three years of our marriage.)  They all know each other.  They claim to have formed a support group.  They have invited my husband as well.  No one will tell me whether or not he accepted, but there’s a meeting I’d like to be a fly on the wall for! 

Owen is mostly still himself, just a lot snottier.  It has to be pretty serious to slow him down much.  Any parent of young children will tell you that under fives are capable of producing roughly twice the liquid volume of their little bodies in snot every hour.

All that aside, we’re still in our jammies, and may stay that way for much of the day.  There’s a tent set up in our “library” and a racetrack running through the living room.  I’ve cleaned out the deep freeze and the winter pantry into the slow cooker and added a cup of salsa, a bay leaf and a half bottle of some sort of very dark beer that someone left here. 

The results seldom suck.

I have no ambitious plan for the day.  Just me and Owen, hangin’ out.  I’ve really missed our Wednesdays since Sweet Hubby’s stupid boss took away his flex time and forced him back to working five 8 hour days instead of four tens.  We’ve had to put Owen in full time daycare, so now, even though I’m still home on Wednesdays, (*I* still work four tens) I’m home alone.  Don’t get me wrong, I usually need the rest, but I miss my private time with my son. 

So today is a bit of a treat.  We’re too sick to visit anyone-my mom has her surgery coming up on the 24th-she’s being intubated for dialysis, so we can’t risk giving her another cold…but not sick enough to be really miserable.  No, Christine, I’m not being cocky, you showed us what happens to cocky people this week!

So that’s it. 

If you’re looking for us, you know where we’ll be.

We may or may not answer the phone. 

I can’t reach it from the tent.

Ok, for those of you who have been asking, yes, I saw the specialist again on Monday for my three month 5, 000k check up.

I’m fine.

Actually FINE.

Red blood count is almost normal after nearly two years skating right on the line between “immediate transfusion” and “let’s give it another 30 days, and hope you don’t die in the meantime”.

All the different toxins from the meds are also down, which means kidneys are functioning pretty close to normally.

Still bruising like a grape, but have been given the go ahead to drop the Immuran dose by a third which should help. 

There is nothing anyone can do about the joint pain.  That’s just life. 

After the last couple of years, I’ll take it.

I’m doing SO well, in fact, that outside of having bloodwork each month, I don’t have to see anyone again until JULY!!!!

I feel like I’ve been let off my leash for the first time in ages.

And so is my creaky old self. 

On cold windy days no amount of clever things like rolled blankets under doors can keep the cold air from blowing in through all the cracks.

Which makes everything hurt.

I have a list of errands that need running that is a mile long, an enormous pile of housework to do and a lot of other things that need my attention.

What I want is a book-not something too thinky today,  (Foucault’s Pendulum is still sitting accusingly on the table, reminding me I haven’t finished it!) a blanket, and a cup of tea.

A little quiet time with some happy bit of fluff and a chance to warm up would do me a lot of good.

Instead, I’m going to go look for my car keys. 

I last saw them in the back of a freight car, being “zoomed” around a lego train track.

Then I have to go out.

😦

As my older sibling reported on her blog, my oldest uncle died this week.  No one’s really surprised, as he’d been sick for quite some time.  Nonetheless, it’s sad.  Like my sister, I can’t look back on a summer weekend at the cottage without him quietly puttering away in the background, along with my dad, making sure everything worked that was supposed to, and keeping the place from falling down under the traffic of several dozen Italian relatives running in and out and all around.  He quietly kept an eye on things, and had a gift for doing it in such a way that you never KNEW he was watching. 

Until AFTER you’d been busted.

Like most of the men in the family, Farna could build you a working barbecue out of any six household objects.

He was a kind man, with a good sense of humour (Apparently a requirement if you’re going to marry a Botari woman.  I’m told we can be a handful, though personally, I don’t see it!) and a gentle nature.

I’m sad for my aunt as well, because it’s hard to lose someone you love, and harder still to watch them suffer, and she’s had to do both now.

I know, everything has a time, and everything dies.  It’s all part of the cycle of life.

But I’m a little sad, nonetheless.  It’s like losing a little piece of my childhood.

The funeral’s Monday, in Port Colbourne.

And I can’t go.

I have no idea when he’ll regain Tropical Storm Status, much less hurricane strength.  He has a sick. 

The phone rang at about 11:00am this morning.  School calling me to come get my baby.

He went from a cheerful little boy with a bit of a cough to a raving, deliriously sick little boy with a 102 temp, wheezing for breath in the space of about three hours today.

The verdict?  The same “almost pneumonia” that gramma and grampa both have. 

Actually, not to be outdone by anyone, gramma has full blown pneumonia.  Only three weeks before her surgery was scheduled.

So now he’s on trimethoprim – sulfamethoxazole.  It’s a pretty big gun antibiotic combo, but his doctor felt that because of the severity and suddenness that it was worth risking the side effects.  Apparently there’s a new antibiotic resistant staph infection making the rounds that develops into hemorrhagic pneumonia for the very unlucky, and is already killing people in Canada.

Not the sort of thing you want to hear when your child is sick.

The four hours in the walk in clinic today also means that, being immune-suppressed, even if I manage to avoid what Owen has, I’m sure to have picked up something else. 

Besides more kids.

It was an odd visit. 

Sweet Hubby sent along a new kid’s book-Clemmency Pogue: Fairy Killer, which I quietly started reading to Owen while we were waiting.  It’s a little advanced for less than three, but Owen’s a bright kid, and really, when he’s that sick, it’s just about hearing my voice.   After the first 20 minutes or so, I began to notice all the chairs around us filling up.  After 30, there were kids sitting on the floor in front of us.

By the time they called our name, there was a chorus of “Awwwwww” from about 20 kids. 

I forgot school was still out.  Apparently everyone got the plague for Christmas.

When we left, a dozen or so other moms stopped us on our way out to say thanks for providing the distraction that kept their sick, bored little kids quiet for long enough for them to have a cup of coffee while they waited, instead of trashing the waiting room.  (It’s a nice clinic-cafe in the waiting room)  The woman at the pharmacy waved goodbye too.

Then off to Fortino’s to pick up our prescription. 

Our Pharmacist, Atilla was very apologetic when telling us it would likely be a 30 min wait because EVERYONE on earth was sick.  Owen fell asleep in my arms while we waited.  Eventually one of the big teenaged boys that were sprawled in the armchairs the pharmacy provides for waiting was shooed away by a little old lady, who told him to “lift his fat ass and let that poor woman have a chair!” and we got to sit.  Owen just rearranged himself, wrapped one hand in my hair and said “Sing Ear a vatta, Mommy.” 

I did. 

He went back to sleep. 

We were there for almost an hour. 

Several people stopped to tell me that we were the loveliest thing they’d seen all day.

The woman who works the coffee counter saw us when she went on her break.

She came back with a cookie for him. 

The lady from the deli counter brought a drink of water when he started coughing, and the customer service girl from the bulk food brought him a lollipop.

They all remembered his name, even though I hadn’t mentioned it today.

These are all familiar strangers.  We’ve seen them several times a week since Owen was very tiny.  They don’t owe us anything, and it never occurred to me that anyone ever really noted our passing by at all.

Today was one of those days that reassures you of the basic kindness in the hearts of most people. 

In spite of the sick boy, it cheered me up immensely.  Must remember that in my day to day life.  You just never know when the tiniest things you do will make someone’s day.

Every interaction is a choice.

Because it’s too hard to type with an ice pack on my right hand.  

The peas keep spilling!

Go away.

Come back in two weeks.

No. 

I’m not going to explain.

The other day, I asked for funnies.

Scotty never, ever disappoints me in this regard, coming from so far out of left field that you had no idea he was even there.  Like, just slightly lefter than, say, Australia. 

Scotty sent me this wonderful list from one of my favourite sites, of “Weapons that don’t exist but should”.

I totally agree with him.  The Chuck-nuns was delectable.

And that’s why I love Scotty.