Pecked by Ducks

Quinn has had a fever since Saturday. It has spiked up and down. He is a little pathetic sick man in the morning, does okay during the day and then around 4 o’clock starts to decline again into little sick man mode just in time for Captain Smarty Pants and I to get home from work.

This morning his little lips were all chapped and crusty and as he listlessly lay on the couch, mouth breathing and watching Noggin, we decided it was time to see the doctor. Or, pedia-chicken, as our good friend Dana calls them.

Now up until January of this year, I had been a SAHM for almost 6 years. When the kids were sick, I’m the one up all night, I’m the one who worries or not and I’m the one who takes them to the pedia-chicken. Right?

But not today. Today I have a half hour presentation on a piece of software I hadn’t even seen until 3 days ago because it took a month for the powers that be to deem the futile hours of our troubleshooting efforts to install the software urgent enough to give us a workaround (the presentation was in 3 days after all). And all of this for a presentation to a group of “new college hires” of which I am a part, because I took an entry level job (don’t get me wrong, I love that everyone always asked me where I went to college because they think I am one of them and I love the lack of responsibility that comes with being the bottom of the totem pole) but public speaking on a piece of software I don’t know, for a program I am not sure needs this kind of “cross product exposure” is just rubbing me the wrong way today.

So I’ve got a sick kid, a husband who didn’t bring his laptop home, but who now has to stay home and take said sick kid to the pedia-chicken. I’m not well rested because, well, hello, sick kid since Saturday, I had to wrap a birthday present for a party this afternoon for a friend of Max’s at 4:30 (who plans a birthday party for a kid on a weekday at 4:30? ) and get the electric bill in the mail box. Thanks goodness Captain Smarty Pants made me breakfast! And then? I got to work and had no badge.

Yep, high security building, crazy day with a presentation in a different building that I also need my badge to get into and I don’t have mine. Where is it? On the counter in my bathroom, next to the curling iron I am pretty sure I left on (don’t worry, it has an emergency shut off).

Yep.

That’s my day.

So I called security and they tell me they are doing something and will get to me “as soon as they can” and I sit down to catch my breath and wait.

And wait

And wait.

For 30 minutes. Until I finally just piggyback in with someone who recognized me because I am now 25 minutes late for my 9:00am conference call and have a dry run at 10:00am.

And that security guy? Didn’t call me until almost an hour after I arrived at work. At least he didn’t give me any crap for just going to my desk. Baby steps right?

Okay, so I’m here, I have my Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea, I finished my dry run and am “listening” on live TV at my computer to a presentation, that (yes even before I started blogging) is all Greek to me. Things are settling, I can relax, get my day together, center, prepare for my bout of public speaking, go through my e-mail and “start” my day.

Then, do you know what I just noticed?

Oh, yes, I know you really want to know….

My pants are too big.

Not that I am complaining that I have lost enough weight that my pants are too big, but they are too big to even belt because the waistband just all bunches up unattractively. So now, in two and a half hours, I get to go stand in a room full of people, present on a piece of software I had never seen until 3 days ago, in pants that keep riding down low enough that you can see skin (probably stretch marked skin), and I will have just heard the good or bad news from the pedia-chicken as to what is up with my baby.

Yep. It’s that kind of day.