Alden is sick and Kato is sick and August is sick. Alden and Kato are merely feverish, but August is feverish and sounds like a duck. Which means that all three are on a regimen of alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen while August is also receiving frequent and generous doses of honey-based cough suppressant.
I tell you this not because I think it’s interesting but because I’m quite aware that it’s not.
Instead, let’s dial back to more cheerful days, before the plague descended. Last Wednesday, for example, when the day began with apple pancakes. August helped with stirring and apple presentation.
Perhaps you do not know, but making apple pancakes is exhausting.
August was still sleeping as we dropped Alden off at school and continued driving north with Costco in our sights.
Of course, we stopped for donuts in Middletown, Kato delighted that the month of October so perfectly aligns with his favorite color orange.
August awoke in time to eat his donut and refused to allow the delicious evidence to be wiped from his face.
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The boys and I shopped, procuring many kinds of bulk items and one that was just bulky, a new bed for Iggy, whose bony knees and elbows have just about worn through her old one.
The bed provided protection from an imaginary rainstorm that was furiously hammering down on all the other Costco shoppers, including me, apparently. I was not invited to join the boys beneath the sheltering ledge.
And there you have it. Evidence that there was fun to be had before the kids got sick. It offers a kind of hope that fun might happen again some day. Though the possibility seems so distant at this moment. I’d show you a photo of the current situation on the couch, but I try to shy away from misery and despair. After all, you are trying to enjoy your Friday morning. Here’s hoping your head is free of fever, your nose is not running, and you do not sound like a duck when you cough.