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Sigh--Monday
Apr. 28th, 2008 01:01 pmThis is the kind of day I hate: when your spouse is working in another town and will be gone for 12 hours (including all shopping hours), when you have one liter of milk left for the whole family to last until after breakfast the next day (not because you were irresponsible, but because it was the weekend and therefore you had a gap in your every day shopping routine. And then it's suddenly warm and you realize you don't have any short-sleeved shirts. So you have to go shopping, only as of today, the street closest to the mall where you're going is closed, and the bus drops you off blocks from where you need to go, which means you waste a lot of time you don't have to get there in the first place. You get home after your second-grader does, and as soon as you walk in the door the answering machine is calling you back with urgent messages from the kindergarten: Frau Green! Your daughter has chicken pox!* And you have kids coming and going every thirty minutes or so all afternoon due to the crazy school schedules, and you're basically serving four separate lunches, and it's the one sunny day you have to wash all your clothes and actually dry them, and nobody has any clothes left, so you'd better get a move on. (Edawn, you'd better appreciate that washer and dryer while you're there!)
*She doesn't actually have chicken pox. She's been vaccinated, and apart from that, it looks like a case of molluscum contagiosum, otherwise known as Dellwarzen here. Kids get it from sharing towels at kindergarten. It's basically a series of warts on their arms; they look like big zits and don't itch, although if you scratch them open you can spread them to other parts of your skin. The general consensus on the internet is that a) it can take weeks to YEARS to go away, b) you don't have to keep kids home from school because of it, c) you can freeze them off or cut them off, but it gets a bit traumatic for kids if they have say, 20 of them, and d) there have been scientific studies supporting the popular home treatment of um, duct tape. Cut it into tiny squares, cover each wart, and leave it on for two weeks. Or, put it on each night and rip it off in the morning (our approach, since if I sent my kid without Strumpfhose one day to school, can you imagine what they'd say if I sent her covered in squares of in duct tape?). They think it stimulates the immune system to get to work there. It's a virus and there's nothing you can really do for it until it's just gone. But it looks terrible. Anyway, the doctor can't really do anything for a virus, which is why I haven't brought her, but now I'm thinking maybe I should, just so the kindergarten stops freaking out. I will still have kids coming and going all afternoon, which is something I'd need to work out. And after being on my feet all day, I'd really, REALLY like to sit down and rest so I don't you know, have too many of those contractions my doctor doesn't like. Plus I have hay fever AND a cold. And a bunch of urgent stuff waiting for me to take care of.
I just want to crawl into a hole!!
ETA: If they're just warts, the kindergarten will let her back in. If not, they want a doctor's note. Wait. What am I saying? They want a doctor's note regardless. And they don't have a spot for her until tomorrow morning at the doctor's. The bad news is, if it's Dellwarzen, they'll pin her down and cut them all off. Um. Trying to imagine this. It will NOT go over well. (And just because the warts are gone doesn't mean the virus is--that doesn't go away until the body fights it off, which, like I said, can take years...)
Also: I'm really not trying to be an irresponsible parent. I figured that if her friend had it, and she was allowed in kindergarten, and every single thing I saw on the internet in English and German said there was no need to keep kids out of school/kindergarten because of it, that it was okay to send her. What you can't do is go swimming with them--they are contagious in water. But I guess I'm the horrible mom who lets her daughter wear short sleeves and no Strumpfhose to school when it's warm and sunny, and the mom who sends her kid with warts to kindergarten as well.
I have my own appointment tomorrow afternoon, so basically everything is coming to a standstill tomorrow... (faints thinking about it)
*She doesn't actually have chicken pox. She's been vaccinated, and apart from that, it looks like a case of molluscum contagiosum, otherwise known as Dellwarzen here. Kids get it from sharing towels at kindergarten. It's basically a series of warts on their arms; they look like big zits and don't itch, although if you scratch them open you can spread them to other parts of your skin. The general consensus on the internet is that a) it can take weeks to YEARS to go away, b) you don't have to keep kids home from school because of it, c) you can freeze them off or cut them off, but it gets a bit traumatic for kids if they have say, 20 of them, and d) there have been scientific studies supporting the popular home treatment of um, duct tape. Cut it into tiny squares, cover each wart, and leave it on for two weeks. Or, put it on each night and rip it off in the morning (our approach, since if I sent my kid without Strumpfhose one day to school, can you imagine what they'd say if I sent her covered in squares of in duct tape?). They think it stimulates the immune system to get to work there. It's a virus and there's nothing you can really do for it until it's just gone. But it looks terrible. Anyway, the doctor can't really do anything for a virus, which is why I haven't brought her, but now I'm thinking maybe I should, just so the kindergarten stops freaking out. I will still have kids coming and going all afternoon, which is something I'd need to work out. And after being on my feet all day, I'd really, REALLY like to sit down and rest so I don't you know, have too many of those contractions my doctor doesn't like. Plus I have hay fever AND a cold. And a bunch of urgent stuff waiting for me to take care of.
I just want to crawl into a hole!!
ETA: If they're just warts, the kindergarten will let her back in. If not, they want a doctor's note. Wait. What am I saying? They want a doctor's note regardless. And they don't have a spot for her until tomorrow morning at the doctor's. The bad news is, if it's Dellwarzen, they'll pin her down and cut them all off. Um. Trying to imagine this. It will NOT go over well. (And just because the warts are gone doesn't mean the virus is--that doesn't go away until the body fights it off, which, like I said, can take years...)
Also: I'm really not trying to be an irresponsible parent. I figured that if her friend had it, and she was allowed in kindergarten, and every single thing I saw on the internet in English and German said there was no need to keep kids out of school/kindergarten because of it, that it was okay to send her. What you can't do is go swimming with them--they are contagious in water. But I guess I'm the horrible mom who lets her daughter wear short sleeves and no Strumpfhose to school when it's warm and sunny, and the mom who sends her kid with warts to kindergarten as well.
I have my own appointment tomorrow afternoon, so basically everything is coming to a standstill tomorrow... (faints thinking about it)
