TGIF, Baybay.
This morning, continuing from yesterday, I had a lot of random stuff in my IT queue. And so I was running about. I’d forgotten my cellphone upstairs – my boss came down, having answered my insistant (and LOUD) ringing.
It was the office of my son’s school. He was feeling ill. I called back to figure out how ill he was. Should I take a cab because he was dripping in barf? Walk quickly because he was lying down with a fever? Or finish up because he was a little headachey?
The receptionist picked up the phone. “Hello? Hello? Hello? I can’t hear you!” she said. I called her from 3 different phones. Wasn’t me, it was her handset.
So I called John – maybe he was already on the way? His phone was off. (I’d forgotten. His fabulous, supportive, and most wonderful office went together to a movie this morning.)
So I left at a quick walk, calling my sick IT co-worker up on the way – there are things that need to be finished.
When I got to the school, Ripley was outside playing. He is feeling unwell, but not terribly so. Sigh. We scrambled the jets for not so much.
But, I’m glad it’s Friday.
Since coming home, I’ve seen CNN cover Obama’s barber. Really? Really.
They talked about his barber in a NYT article Scott made me read recently. It was all about Hyde Park, our old neighborhood, and how it’s different having the Secret Service there, and how Obama can’t just go to the Medici or the Valois Cafeteria anymore unescorted – to say nothing of his barber for the last 14 years.
And it did not make me nostalgic for the old neighborhood. But it did make me think, huh, I never did eat at the Valois Cafeteria.
This reminds me of something that happened to me recently…
A fww weeks ago, I got a call from King George saying Michael had fallen off a stage and and they wanted to call an ambulance to check his spine.
I was at work, covering the office alone while my co-worker was in Mexico.
This is how it went:
Me: “Is he okay?”
King George: “He’s lying down in the nurse’s office, he’s a bit shaken.”
Me: “Um – well, how high was the stage?” [I know this sounds heartless, but I know my child. When he has a splinter, he gets so worked up, you’d think he was impaled on an iron spike.]
KG: “About 5 feet.”
Me: [This doesn’t sound like spine-shattering to me, but I decide to investigate further.] “Is he able to move?”
KG: “Yes, he walked upstairs to the office after it happened.”
Me: “Oh. Well – do you think an ambulance is really neccessary?”
KG: “Both the first aid attendant and I think it would be a good idea.”
Me: [Finally starting to think with rising anxiety that this might really be serious] “Okay.”
So I call my boss on his cell phone (who, incidentally, is in a very impotant meeting) in a panic and tell him Michael has fallen off a stage and is having his spine checked by paramedics and may need x-rays and that I have to close down the office for the rest of the day.
And I call Patrick and freak him out and get him all in a panic and arrange to meet him downtown, and then I hang up and I’m rushing around trying to get things all tidied up so I can get down there when I decide to call the school, just in case they’ve already taken him to St. Paul’s.
The paramedic answers the phone. And chuckles.
Turns out Michael was fine; he’s sent back to class and later that day arrives home with a friend in tow acting as if nothing at all had happened.
Bless King George for being so diligent, but
I felt, that afternoon, that I simply couldn’t endure anymore drama for the rest of the year.