Foiled Pans

You think you have your week mapped out before you and then the smallest occurrence can foil your plans.

This came in the form of a rather impressive-looking teenage pimple sported by one Master Seven when he emerged last Friday morning.

“I don’t want to go to school,” he whimpered. “All the kids will laugh at me.”

My god, this wasn’t supposed to start yet was it?

I sent him to school and sure enough he was teased.

By the time the weekend finished it was obvious this was not some random teenage pimple - the spot had spread into impetigo, AKA “school sores” and my normally handsome little man was not looking pretty.

Fortunately I have a lovely, understanding boss who let me work from home in order to keep Master Seven off school and get him to the doctors.

While there, he didn’t think to mention he felt sick. It wasn’t till we were heading out the doors, prescription in hand, that I heard him make a funny sound, hand covering mouth.

“Are you going to be sick?” I asked. 

He nodded and I swung him round and got him to the toilets in the nick of time.

Well, not quite – he power-chucked and got most of it in the bowl but I spent the next 15 minutes on my hands and knees cleaning up the remainder.

Next came the problem of waiting for the prescription with a green-looking son. There was nothing for it (that I could think of anyway) but to sit him next to the rubbish bin outside while we waited. I didn’t think the pubic would appreciate their gardens being fertilized in that manner.

I still had another few errands to run – including an overdue WOF and going up to my work to email myself some work - so we stopped off at home to have the first intake of medicine.

The doctor had warned us it was foul.

I had a little sip and immediately regretted it. That stuff was vile. I poured Master Seven’s into a full glass of orange juice but even this did not dilute the potent taste.

He sat on that one glass for an hour, moaning in agony with every sip while I empathetically encouraged him on. Even the line-up of six jellybeans to follow was not enough enticement.

Finally we were done (although I noted there were three doses a day) and, grabbing a sick bowl, we headed back out the door. The poor thing got dragged around the city for most of the day. The spew bowl was certainly a blessing whilst stuck in an hour-long traffic jam.

The highlight for him was turning up at my workplace and discovering it looked “just like Shortland Street”, before meeting my friendly co-workers and discovering that “Mummy has highlighter pens at her desk”, as he reported back to his brother and sister later that day.

The next day dawned my birthday and I was a tad tired. You see, the night before, the kids had declared themselves too excited to sleep. God knows why – I certainly wasn’t. Anyone would think it was Christmas.

However, I was relieved from the planned (and no doubt sloppy) breakfast in bed by a daughter under the weather with croup and her twin brother wanting to get in on the action by claiming to have a sore tummy. The jury’s still out on the latter but it completely threw my day.

Three “sick” kids amidst a whole lot of work piled up was not how I planned to spent my day.

The idea is to make it as boring as possible so they think twice about pulling a sickie again - the next day the twins happily trotted off to school and it was just me and a still-spotty Master Seven at home.

But now here I find myself working all weekend - plans to take the kids away abandoned - as I make up the extra hours lost.

And it all began with that one “teenage pimple”.