The Plan Has Been Revised…As Usual

The plan for today had me getting up early and hustling to get the car packed and all of us out the door to go to my family reunion. I was going to have to move really fast because there were things that I should have done earlier, but didn’t.

At 1 am this morning Patches got out of bed and asked for a pot. He then used the pot repeatedly.

We have a family reunion every year and almost every year someone has some variety of flu. I have frequently bemoaned the fact that it is usually my children who are the vectors for this stuff. We bring new and exciting illnesses to share with all my relatives. Whee. Usually the illness does not manifest until after we have arrived and it is too late to prevent passing it around. We had one extremely memorable reunion where 20 of us all spent 2 days sick simultaneously. This time we are forewarned.

This morning we called around to talk to everyone and ask opinons. Did we need to exile ourselves to prevent passing the bug along? Everyone agreed that taking an extra 24 hours to observe would be a good idea. So instead of running out the door today, I have an additonal day to get things done.

The consensus is that if no one new gets sick between now and tomorrow morning, then we’ll proceed with the reunion as planned. We think that this illness is “Con Crud” that Howard brought back from Comic Con. Several people in our household have had various digestive discomforts over the past week. Patches is more prone to full on stomach flu than anyone else in the family. So we think that Patches is just the last one to catch a fairly mild bug. The Comic Con theory would also explain why my kids always have new and exciting germs to share. My family typically holds their reunions a couple of weeks after Comic Con. This is just about perfect for Howard to bring stuff home, vector to the kids, and then we share with everyone else.

Some day I’d like to have an Owens family reunion with no illness attached. If that is totally impossible, at least I’d like someone else to be the vector. I’d be almost happy to bring kids home sick, knowing it is only my just due for the quantities of illnesses that I’ve inflicted on others.