I.
Jason, the last man standing, is down. I repeat, THE HUSBAND IS DOWN. He is by far the least disgusting patient, at least, and his illness has resulted in absolutely nothing I had to clean up.
II.
But! Noah is fine. Ezra is also, finally, oh-thank-God fine and at back at school today.
I don't think I need to tell you that, humor and poor-poor-me snark aside, I was really, really worried about that one. I have never seen any of my children that sick, for which I know I am lucky, because it obviously could have been so, so much worse. He's lost a ton of weight and is still sleeping approximately 18 hours a day, but last night around dinnertime he asked for scrambled eggs and meatballs and macaroni and steak and polenta and cheese and chicken and was basically grabbing anything from the fridge he could get his hands on to eat. A jar of mustard! A pomegranate! Parsley! Whatever!
(Except for what's left of the raspberries. Those are being pointedly ignored.)
Ike is improving but probably needs another day to be back at 100%. I'm still washing a lot of diapers. And if you, like Jason, wonder why in the world I wouldn't cut myself a break and use disposables in the meantime, I will give you the Official Party Line, which is that the disposables equal blowouts and give him a rash.
(That's sort-of the truth. The rest-of-the-way truth is that I seekritly ordered some more diapers and doublers that I absolutely 100% did not need but just plain waaa-aaanted so this allows me to wash and prep them faster all seekritly-like. "What? Those? We've had them for ages, I don't know what you're talking about. Go back to bed. YOU'RE CLEARLY HALLUCINATING.")
III.
No word from the school re: the lice issue. I like to think that they are waiting until they have had time to have an Official Emergency Response Strategery Meeting and can respond with a concrete and satisfying Serious Business Is Serious battle plan, but the more likely reason is that my email read like it was written by a crazy person at the end of her fucking goddamn rope.
IV.
Last night some animal(s) got into our backyard and attacked a bag of trash we'd left on the patio table. (Stupid, yes. But I have an excuse: Carrying it across the yard to the covered trash receptacle would have required me to put on shoes.) The mess was epic. Wrappers and plastic bags and various bits of grossness were everywhere, and unless I felt like dealing with approximately 1,237,942 requests from Ceiba to go OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE throughout the day so she could eat some Shitty Plastic WrapTM remnants, I had no choice but to -- sigh -- clean it up right then.
So that's how I ended up in the backyard at 7 am this morning, in my pajamas and rainboots, picking up every individual paper towel befouled during the original Raspberryhorkgate 2012, every shop rag and pair of underwear I'd decided was too unspeakable to even deal with laundering, and other assorted disgusting momentos of this weekend. Again. For the second time. That is some next-level, insult-to-injury, Alanis-Morissette-style-irony karmic bullshit, right there.
V.
The babysitter offered to stay a couple extra hours today, in case I had any "work" I needed to "catch up on."
I fibbed and said that yeah, there are a couple things I need to do. And while a lunch out alone, a pedicure and maybe some aimless wandering around the mall aren't exactly "work," at this point I think those things all practically come with a prescription.

