Weekendly

EB hid all the eggs in the backyard. I don't know why that chair is there.

My sister has a LOT OF NERVE. On my SubMat facebook page (you click that little fb logo up there on the left and "like" my page and then you don't miss a minute of her 'tude), she's all, "Um, blogging 'every day in March.'" This from someone who hasn't blogged in a coon's age. And I was like, March is a long month, gah, and then my Dad helpfully pointed out that there's a difference between metric March and Imperial March. Or something to do with the switch to the Gregorian calendar?

Anyway, I think I liked having my previous post at the top of the page for a couple of days. And we had kind of a whirlwind weekend here so far.

We celebrated Easter with the kids on Saturday morning, because Laura has since headed to the beach with her friend's family for Spring Break and wouldn't be home on Sunday morning. Matt the Easter Bunny hid two dozen eggs out in our backyard, which is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of different terrain. Before long, the kids needed hints. He requested a garbage bag, I brought it to him, and he told the kids that for every few pieces of litter or broken plastic crap they gathered, they would get a hint to an egg location. So they were out there picking up trash and finding eggs at the same time. Truly, he is the Master of Revels. Also, his hints rhymed:

"If not at first an egg you see, get thyself to the crook of a tree."

"If eggs you seek, follow this command: look deeper down into the sand."

There were a bunch of these, each more poetical than the last. I sat on the porch drinking coffee and cracking up, proud to have helped him pass his genetic material into the next generation of humans.

I spent the rest of the day helping Laura get ready to go, with a few bumps in the road. She had recovered from her virus and went to school on Friday, and was feeling fine, but then Saturday afternoon, she went for a run with Matt, and came home complaining that her ear hurt. I was all, damnation. I didn't want to send her off with another family for a week if there was a chance her viral head cold had turned into an ear something. So we headed to the clinic at the CVS. That place looked like an extras casting call for "Walking Dead." There were about six people ahead of us and the nurse was at lunch.

I thought, "To heck with this, I'm calling my neighbor." One of Hank's little buddy's mothers is a pediatrician. They live around the corner from us, I see her almost every day, and I have never never sought her medical opinion or asked for a bus stop consulation. I don't know, I just feel like it's an imposition? Though she has never said anything that would give that impression. But I texted her and asked her if she would look in Laura's ear, and she came right away.

She couldn't get her little ear flashlight to work, but she said the easiest thing, given that Laura was going out of town, was to prescribe an antibiotic and call it a day, so she phoned the pharmacy from my kitchen and we were all good. Normally I would have just kept a watch on her and not gone for the ab's, but Laura was nearly in tears because she thought her trip was imperiled. And I didn't think it was an ear infection, I thought it was exercise-induced ear pressure. But I am not that kind of doctor. Anyway, my neighbor told me several times that she was really glad I'd asked her, and I thought, well maybe she became a pediatrician because she wants to help children, even if they just live around the corner. And her husband is a plastic surgeon, so between them, we're covered.

Later, to Matt, I was like, "That was so convenient!" And he was like, "Having the doctor come to your house? Yes."

As Laura gathered her things together to get out the door, her ear pain lessened and lessened until it seemed she'd made a full recovery. I think my ear-pressure diagnosis was correct. Humanities PhD power! So I delivered her into the care of the other family. Matt and I feel comfortable with her instincts and judgment, as well as with that family, so I'm thinking she'll have a wonderful week. My biggest fear is drowning, and I told her not to go past her knees in the Gulf, which she won't because she thinks there are a lot more sharks than there really are.

Then Matt and I, the carefree parents of one child, threw all our stuff together and headed up to the mountain house, late. Hank fell asleep immediately, and we rode along companionably. One fun topic for musing was, if our family life were a sitcom, who and what would be the best potential spinoffs? Like Archie Bunker spun off the Jeffersons, who were the Bunkers' neighbors. Following that template, we thought the telegenic black family around the corner (my friendly kitchen pediatrician!) would make good viewing. And we conceived of a hipster office comedy involving Matt's twenty-something employees.

I guess the two of us have already talked about all the important things.

Now I'm just telling you everything that happened to me since we last spoke. Sorry.

I hope you have had a wonderful weekend. xoxo