Scenes from a sick day

This past Tuesday, when I bailed on work in order to keep the little girl out of daycare, one of my parental tasks was to take a mid-morning axillary temperature reading to see if she was still running as high a fever as she had had the night before. I accomplished this fairly easily, giving thanks all the while that (in this regard at least) she’s a lot more cooperative/less squirmy than her brother was at the same age. That temp-taking yielded a nice low number (though it would spike again later that night) and I turned her loose to play, while I sat on the couch to finish the book I would have otherwise polished off on my morning commute.

I use my monthly train pass as a bookmark, because I’m inherently more likely to remember whatever book I’m currently reading than to remember the ticket in and of itself, so it was sticking out of the book as I read. At one point the little girl wandered over to me and grabbed the ticket and ran off with it. She seemed to be enjoying herself so I didn’t make a fuss; I figured it couldn’t be too hard to track it down later.

The little girl soon moved on to playing with some of her dolls and stuffed animals. Usually her go-to pretend activity is to lay the toy down on the floor, drape a blanket (or towel or other blankety stand-in) over the toy, and pat its back while making “shh-shh-shh” noises. Sometimes she’ll gather up the doll and blanket in her arms and walk around, patting its back and shh-shh-shh-ing. She did all this on Tuesday, of course, but into the mix she added taking the dolls’ temperatures. Perfectly understandable, since the thermometer looks a bit like a toy anyway with its rubber duckie shaped handle, not to mention how quick on the uptake the little girl is. It was truly adorable.

When I finished my book I took a quick look around the living room and dining room and kitchen to see if I could spot my purloined train pass, but I could not. I still didn’t think it could have gotten very far.

A bit later it was time for the little girl to have a nap, and I had planned all along to really do a focused sweep for the train pass once she was safely ensconced in her crib. And so I did, getting down on my hands and knees to crawl around at her approximate eye-level, looking through our pile of shoes in the foyer and peering under the dishwasher and fridge and poking through the top layer of the garbage can’s contents and digging around in the various toyboxes in the living room, all to no avail. I was beginning to do the math on buying a one-week ticket for the last week of the month versus taking my chances hoping the VRE conductors would recognize me and not ask to see my ticket at all, and I didn’t like the way that equation was balancing. Finally in desperation I checked my work bag, which was sitting on one of the dining room chairs, and lo and behold, that was exactly where the little girl had safely tucked my train ticket. Whew.

She woke up after two hours, which was reasonable enough (though after her semi-sleepless night I was somewhat optimistic she might sleep for three or four hours), and a couple of hours later we went to collect her brother from daycare. Once we were all home I wanted to take his temperature to see if he might be coming down with whatever she had, but I could not find the thermometer. I checked every sleeve of every article of clothing worn by every doll and teddy bear, but no luck. So I moved on to making dinner and then to the little girl’s bedtime rituals. Fortunately, we have two digital thermometers, so I used the other one to discover she was feverish again, and medicated her accordingly, and got her ready for bed.

On Wednesday I returned to the office, and as is my customary post-arrival routine I set my work bag on my desk and rooted through it to dig out the charger for my cell phone and the access card for my GFE and whatnot. Under my day planner and my sunglasses, I also happened to find a digital thermometer with a rubber duckie handle.

Twice may only be a coincidence as opposed to a map-worthy pattern, but I certainly know the first place I’m going to look the next time I can’t find something and the last place I saw it was in my daughter’s tiny plundering hands.