Almost-Alone Time

Ryan is at a conference in Washington all week, so it's just Piper & me until Friday. That's a loooong time with nobody else around. I may or may not survive.

At least she's feeling better. She spiked a temp late Thursday night that continued to climb so we took her to the doctor on Friday. The nurse chastised me for not giving her any medicine that morning. Apparently I should've given her Tylenol for the fever and thereby eliminated her one quantifiable symptom thus far. Then the doctor told me to only give her something if it was above 101, which it was in the office, but it had only been 99.8 that morning. Sigh. Anyway, they took some throat & nose swabs, which caused Piper to scream so loud she could be heard in the parking lot. The verdict was "a virus, probably of the 48-hour variety." So all weekend she moaned and whined and refused to sleep. She kept running around, even though her eyes were so droopy and puffy it looked like she'd been hanging out with Cheech & Chong. You'd think that this would exhaust her and she would crash out for numerous hours of sleep, like the doctor encouraged us to let her do, but no. She woke up every 35 minutes all night, both nights, until I gave up and let her get in bed with us. Then she woke up every 90 minutes.

It was a miserable time, made more so by the fact that we actually had plans this weekend. Ryan asked a friend to babysit and was going to take me to see The Goods so I could indulge my Jeremy Piven crush. We had to cancel. I couldn't even call anyone to hang out for coffee on Sunday, because the alleged 48-hour virus was allegedly contagious. Having a kid means you will always be a plague carrier of one sort or another. Sometimes it's toys that spark another kid's cartoon obsession. Sometimes it's craft projects that shed glitter all over everything they encounter. Sometimes it's 48-hour viruses that make a whiny 2-year-old's parents feel simultaneously guilty and pissed off that she will not sleep when they are dropping in their tracks.