Rear Window

I won. I wasn’t trying to, I swear. I triple-dog-swear. It just happened that I won. Last week after five days of feeling increasingly crappy and having fevers between 102 and 104, I reluctantly went to the doctor. He couldn’t believe I waited so long and called me “extremely patient.” I told him I chalked that up to having three kids under the age of 6. Unable to pinpoint exactly what was wrong with me, but knew it was abnormal that 1) I wasn’t getting better and 2) I was continuing to have extremely high fevers, so he put me on an Earth-tilting, break-glass-when-needed antibiotic that I now understand carries the dreaded black box warning. Sweet. Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about antibiotics — necessary evil unnecessarily prescribed too often — but in this case, I didn’t feel compelled to argue, especially since what the doc had narrowed it down to was either Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or bacterial pneumonia. Or any thousand of other nasty bugs. And with that, I accidentally won the who’s sicker game. I even apologized to the husband, since I felt it was a bit of an unfair ending to our little game. So I spent last week resting while getting sicker and I’ve spent my time since Thursday resting trying to get better with these super drugs fighting my super bugs and basically leaving me feeling like I’ve been scrubbed out with a wire bottle brush. Fun. Which means I’ve been really missing my family, especially the hatchlings.

I woke up in between fitful napping stages yesterday and looked out the window and was pleasantly surprised to see everyone outside enjoying the day. I mean, I couldn’t join them, but I could watch from afar and conjure up my own drug-induced ideas of what might be going on. It looked a little something like this:

Hello, Sister, what are you doing?

Me? Oh nothing, just watching the guineas.

Oh, I want to help!

Okay, if you REALLLLY want to. Buh-bye! (Sucker!)

Dadddyyyy!!!! Whatcha doin?

I wanna help wanna help wanna help wanna help!!!!!!

Okay, kids, let’s go find some sticks!

Yayyyyy!!!! Sticks!!!!

Quit hitting each other!…Stop it!…That’s it!…Now hand over all your sticks!

Here comes Granny and your baby brother. Be careful.

Look at the sweet baby guineas Hatchling #3!

Hey, I love my baby brother!

So what exactly is Daddy doing?

Hey guys! Can somebody come over here with my baby brother because he’s alone and I don’t like to leave him alone in case he cries, okay, okay, thanks!