H1N1

This weekend I left my kids to negotiate life for themselves. I felt like a captain abandoning ship. While I would be taking a private charter with my husband to South Dakota, my kids would be following a typed schedule posted on the fridge of who needs to be where, when. The schedule was pretty hectic, but all that went out the window when I got a call from my youngest.

The airplane has just touched down and we had barely received the announcement that it was o.k. to turn on our cellular devices. It was then that my phone rang. "Mom, I feel sick - hold on a minute (the sound of hurling, then crying). Mom, I just threw up. Can you come back home?" Awesome. Lucky for us my high-schoolers were at lunch together and a were easily reached. They were able to pick her up before the sawdust even dried in the hallway.

So the weekend of high hopes went straight away down the drain. The T-Birds lost, I didn't get to see Mt. Rushmore or my husband. Instead I spent the weekend alone in an ugly hotel room texing correct amounts of medicine, telling them what to do for a fever, and reminding them to keep a bucket close by so there wouldn't be a mess to clean up. The kids spent the weekend sipping soda while lying on the couch bed.

I had really hoped we would be able to avoid the swine flu. When Dr. Oz said one in three would get the H1N1 virus this winter, I knew we were done for. Seeing as there's six of us, I guess we've got one down and one to go.