But I Have a Good Excuse

Yep, yet another Peep Asleep photo, because I can't get my shit together enough while she's awake to take one.

But give me a break, I'm siiiick. Officially, and everything.

Peeper and I have been dealing with cold symptoms for a couple of weeks now, but almost all better. Then Sunday, my throat started hurting. It didn't develop into a cold the next day, as usual. Instead, it hurt worse, and yesterday, it started feeling swollen back there, so I took a look with a flashlight and mirror.

Now, I don't spend a lot of time looking at healthy throats, so I'm not certain what it's supposed to look like, but I'm pretty sure that ain't it. If I had to give a description, I'd go with red, swollen and white patches.

So, into the doctor I went, where the nurse swabbed me for the Rapid Strep test, and the doctor walked in a few minutes later and said, "Guess what?" and I said, "I have strep!" and she prescribed antibiotics, after some discussion of drug allergies and breastfeeding.

Before she left the room, I said, "Oh, can I show you something else?" and told her about the top of my foot (and maybe into my ankle?) that's been hurting since I twisted it in, oh, June.

Usually, if I'm just sitting around, I don't feel a thing, but there are ways I can move it that alway hurts, and if I do much walking at all (like around the grocery store, not like a 5K) it hurts enough to want to limp a bit.

I've wondered if it's a bit swollen, compared to the other foot, and Shrike agrees that it probably is. The doctor took one look at it and said, "You know it's not normal to have a bump there, right?" and then "Yeah, I'm going to send you over to get this X-rayed," and on her way out she said, again, "That's quite an impressive bump."

As luck would have it, the pharmacy and the lab are in the same building, just up the road from the doctor's office, so I was able to go take care of both those things and still have time to pop home for a few minutes before going to pick Peeper up at school.

When we got home, I  took some Tylenol and the first dose of antibiotics, then pretty much pointed her at the computer and pointed myself at the couch, where we both stayed for a good while. I felt better when I woke up, but certainly not all better.

She let me sleep for a while, and then after a bit of a melt-down over not being able to find the right Wizard of Oz app on the iPad, she became Ms. Super Helpful Girl.

I was "cooking dinner" (preparing boxed mac and cheese) when she ran into the kitchen saying, "Oh! I want to set the table! I'm Galoot, and I don't have any thumbs!" She did an amazing job for having no thumbs.

She even got drinks for both of us, which is quite a procedure: Get a cup from the low cupboard, open fridge (that's an effort for her), fill them from the Brita dispenser, turn it off turn it off turn it off, clean up the water with a dishtowel, and close the fridge.

She brought me the veggies, and helped me serve them up (salad for me, a la carte for her), and carried her plate to the table.

Then she cleared her dishes - even putting the spilled mac and cheese back onto the plate, and helped me empty the dishwasher and put a couple of pieces of silverware in to be washed.

Of course, I had to ask her to do each of those things, she didn't know they needed to be done, but "Galoot" was perfectly agreeable about it all.

It occurred to me later that if we were doing the Elf on the Shelf in the "traditional" way, where he's a spy reporting back to Santa about the kids' good and bad behavior, Christopher would have gotten all the credit for that, and she would've gotten none.

So, point being, I didn't take any photos of her during the day. So, here she is asleep. Again.