I woke up this morning to the sounds of a crying baby… before sunrise — it’s always a bad sign when Layla is awake before we are on a weekday. I went and grabbed her and brought her back into our bed in the hopes she’d get some sleep and allow us to do the same. Unfortunately the sweaty, feverish baby also had a bug bite on her leg that she insisted on scratching so despite her silence there was constant movement as she was determined to stop that itch. Eventually, after several warnings and Tamie grabbing her leg, Layla finally slept.
Hours later, we all woke up and scrambled to get ready as we got up later than expected, as usual. I wonder, if one always gets up later than one expects, shouldn’t one’s expectations eventually change? I’ll let you know if/when mine do. It was with little surprise that I found Layla had a fever and, as a result, could not go to daycare. Thankfully, Tamie’s mom was available to take care of her so we were able to go to work.
Since I didn’t have to drop Layla at daycare, I had the wonderful opportunity to get in an even more crowded train than usual (ie. an earlier one). The general strategy I employ when getting on such trains is to find an old lady or a young student sitting on a seat and stand in front of them. They are usually the ones that get off the earliest leaving me with a place to sit down and sleep for 45 minutes. Luckily for me, I found a plum old lady sitting alone watching the time closely on her cell phone. Unluckily for me, her apparent eagerness to get off was not a sign of her impending departure and I was forced to stand for the whole trip.
Stinky salary men on my flanks and at least two elbows in my back, I was having a great time on my commute. The only bright side was the train was running late due to a fierce drizzling of rain meaning even more people tried to cram their ways onto the coach at every stop. At one stop a guy got literally stuck in the door. These aren’t your friendly elevator doors that reopen if they bump into someone – he was seriously stuck. It took two train employees to open the door enough so that he could cram himself into the sardine can with the rest of us. The funny thing is, I’m sure that in the time it took to dislodge him from the door and get the train moving again, the next train would have come.
A busy workday later, I got a phone call from Tamie. Her mom is concerned about Layla and thinks she might have swine flu so she’s taking her to a clinic. Say what? It was during this phone call that I found out that one of the daycare staff had caught the virus. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
I told Tamie I’d go and meet her and Layla in Ebina, and at just after 9 we met up. Layla, hopped up on drugs, seemed absolutely fine, although she hadn’t eaten anything and was still boiling. On the way home, I grabbed a light double quarter-pounder meal at McDonald’s and we got Layla some bread to go with her water, at her request. We shared the food which, looking back, might not have been the smartest thing to do given her high fever and my not wanting to get sick.
It wasn’t long after we got home that Tamie started feeling a bit sick. And then a bit more sick. She went to lay down while I stayed up with Layla, who refused to go to bed but instead laid on me trying not to fall asleep. It was a losing battle that she eventually gave up — I put her to bed with little trouble, thankfully. At this point, Tamie emerged from the bedroom looking ready to keel over. She was planning on working at home but those plans obviously changed to planning on not dying. I told her to her to get back to bed and rest but she refused and instead laid on me trying not to fall asleep. It was a losing battle that she eventually gave up… it’s sometimes scary how similar my two girls are…
… and then there’s me. The pillar of health, tapping out this blog entry in my vain attempt of not going to bed and exposing myself to whatever it is that those two might have caught. Is it swine flu? Who knows — not the doctor, that’s for sure… turns out you (or at least he) can’t properly diagnose swine flu in the early stages so Layla needs to go see a doctor again tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.,