A long night

Friday there was the dreaded contagion sign posted on the door of Aerin’s classroom.  “A child is this room has been diagnosed with Conjunctivitis (pinkeye).”  Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes.

Sunday at lunch, after the kids had been in the church nursery happily exchanging germs for half the morning, I noticed Aerin’s right eye was bright red. Whatever good I got from that morning’s thorough churchin’ was immediately undone by the invective that filled my head. I swallowed a couple youhavegototbefuckingkiddingmes and instead leaned across the table to Todd.

“You want the bad news, or the bad news?  Because THERE IS NO GOOD NEWS.”

Back home, we scrounged up an old bottle of Vigamox, dating from our last flirtation with pinkeye, that isn’t set to expire until 2013.  With the dosage instruction missing, we simply donned our Tyveks, poured half of it into her eye, and made the sign of the cross.

That night, a storm rolled through.  Not a bad one, as these things go in Alabama, but enough that it woke Micah, who made a prompt appearance at my bedside immediately following the first clap of thunder.  It was 3AM.  He solemnly and tremulously informed me that there were “pieces of thunder and wightening aww around my room,” and climbed over to the space between me and Todd where he squirmed and kicked for the next half hour.  He was followed shortly by all three cats, who have recently become skittish of storms.  I suppose being left to die in a tornado twice in the past year was too much for them.

At 3:45 the weather radio in our bedroom blared to life, announcing that everyone in South Huntsville was probably going die.  Or something.  I’m not sure, because the small boy to my left and the three cats to my right all jumped out of their skins at the first tone and I missed the details of the announcement as Micah’s arms were wrapped around my head in a starfish-like paroxysm of terror.

At 4 AM, the storm quieted down.  I asked Micah if he was ready to head back to his bed.  He allowed that he was and together we made our way upstairs, where I lovingly tucked him into his bed and tracked down all his stuffed animals.  Then I gratefully crawled back into my own warm bed.

At 4:30, just as I was drifting back to sleep, Todd rolled over and viciously elbowed me in the face, splitting my lip and jolting me awake.  He claims to remember nothing of it and swears it must have been an accident.

At 5 AM, I opened my eyes to see Micah’s face approximately an inch from mine.  “GAHAHHhhhello baby, what’s wrong?”  It was lightning again, you see.

At 5:30 and I cold-heartedly sent him away to make the long, dark trek upstairs to his cold, lonely room alone and turned off my alarm.

At 7:45 Aerin woke us up, yelling at Micah, who had gone into her room, presumably because both his parents were comatose and could not be brought back to consciousness.