Fevered

Summer feels well and truly gone.

I know that Labor Day is a traditional "end of summer" marker for most people, but we don't really notice that. It's more subtle. We'll not stop doing things like swimming at the lakes -- homeschooling means that we can get wet any time the temperature cooperates. (The children have a very different idea of what that temperature is than I do.)

It's just that the pace has changed. I sat down with my calendar and penciled in all of the commitments that I knew of so far -- and odds are good that I'm missing a few. I've even tried to start using my Yahoo! calendar as email reminders might actually prompt me to get to the paper calendar and confirm. I hate it when my distractability causes me to go to an event at the wrong time or place, or worse, miss it completely. It doesn't help that August and September are the birthday months around here -- what is it, holiday celebrations or something? So I have to remember all of the attendant activities around those, which lately include intricate cards made of duct tape. Not by me, fortunately.

I'm wrapping up old classes -- two out of three are graded and "in the can," and I've set up for my new ones which begin next week, so there has been a lot of caretaking and preparing. I'm trying to remember to knit, and to sit at the spinning wheel and feel the thinness of the yarn I'm making flow across my fingers. Some days I have to actually say out loud, "This is not wasting time. Making yarn is important, as important as washing dishes, at least." Guess who's fighting her worthiness demons lately?

We also had my nephews overnight this past week. That is a big couple of days of activity -- two more children, stair-stepped in with mine, agewise, and close enough to jostle for precedence like siblings.

The bill is coming due for some of us.

Thing 1 or the nephews brought home some sort of cold virus last week. My eldest deals with things by being quiet and taking care of herself, and strewing the house with tissues (eeeeewwww). I may resort to taping bags to her wrists so she always has a place to put them. I know she's working on it, though, because when reminded, she either uses a bag or gathers swiftly.

I'm not catching a cold, even though my nose and head beg to differ. I'm feeling okay, so maybe it is a mild form that I have some sort of immunity to. This morning was a really strong, swift set of sprints. Something must be going well, because I had two good 3.5 mile runs this week, and the last interval today felt as though I was being pulled toward the end of that sycamore "tunnel" I run down, or as though I was a subway car on a track. Quite a rush.

The other kids seem okay, just maybe a little under the weather.

But Thing 4 only has three years' worth of immune responses under her belt. I knew she was sick, because she sounds like an aging starlet who's smoked for years, and because when we played puppies today, she asked to be taken to the vet. Unlike the puppy named Sandy, having her nails trimmed isn't going to fix her today.

This afternoon, we were lying on the couch since we'd done most of the big work today demanded, and she was flopping around and sounding very unhappy. She also felt cold, and wanted a sweater, then a blanket.

I'm not the fastest-thinking mother in the world, but it finally dawned on me -- I felt her forehead. She's running enough of a fever to feel badly. Reminds me of the time we threw a big party and Thing 2 was so sick that she would wander out from our bedroom to the party room, then fall asleep on one of us, and we'd put her back in bed, and an hour and a half later, she'd repeat the performance. I think she slept about 20 hours that day.

The laptop screen shielded her face from my view when it dawned on me that she wasn't moving so much and had stopped "talking."


I hope this sleep restored her and the fever and she can work together to build a good immune response for other colds.