Work Life Cluster #1 of Infinity

I am working from home today.  Love it.  Six weeks in, and already I’m That Lady who “remotes in” because her kids are “sick.”

Rewind . . .  this past weekend was one of those lovely, totally miserable, cuddly, feverish, tv-all-day weekends when all three of us were very ill.  (The fourth, The Professor, was driving a million hours to go get our new car.  Insert whine about Life keeping him from ever being home for any length of time.)  We were basically cats – lolled across furniture, in and out of naps, nibbling food on occasion but mostly just moving as little as possible.  (This all went down right after the Corn Maze/Mojave Desert outing, which did not cause, though certainly hastened, our downward spiral.)  As twists of tissues and dirty plates and empty juice cups piled up around us on every surface, we (I) did our best to ignore the rising tide of squalor.  I managed a few loads of laundry (which remain, at this time, unfolded), but otherwise expended effort only on feeding and watering my children and keeping their heinies clean.*

This Weekend O’ Lazing worked a treat for Liam.  He bounded out of bed on Monday as chirpy as ever.  It worked moderately for me – I wouldn’t describe myself at 6:15 on Monday morning as “bounding,” exactly, but my fever was gone and I was well enough to go to work.  Jack, however, only got slower and more grey-looking, with intermittent fever.  The Professor, back for one day, spent that Monday caring for the boys, giving them one more day out of daycare to fully recover.

Enter Tuesday.  Jack awakes with a mild fever – he cannot go to daycare.  The husband is gone to New Orleans for the week.  I have a court appearance that I can’t miss.  ALREADY WITH THIS SHIZZ.  This is the eternal problem of we mothers who went to law school with children (or had them while there – or both!)  There is no easing into the job, no proving ourselves before we have to ask for accommodations.  From minute one, we ride the sick child-missed court appearance Risk Merry Go Round.

Luckily for my blood pressure, I am paired with a secretary who is a total blessing.  In a bid that will not win Mother of the Year, but I think balanced the competing needs of a mom whose kid is sick but whose job pays (half) the bills, I doped Jack with Tylenol and brought him to work, bundled him in some blankets and put him in front of a DVD while I did a few things and gathered enough stuff to bring home and do more.  And then my gorgeous secretary took him into her office, where she’d made him the warmest little “nest,” and he fell sound asleep in there.  He napped the whole time I was at court, and for a couple of hours afterwards, while I worked and checked on him fifty times.  When he woke up of his own accord, I took him home, passing probably at least half of the partners on my way out.  (I even met some in the parking garage).  They are great people and nobody’s really going to care, but still, it’d be EVEN BETTER if they didn’t have to be made fully aware of the exact moment I departed.

After waiting several minutes for a very slow elevator, only to have Jack declare he had to go “peep” in the potty at that very minute no we couldn’t wait til we get to the first floor . . . I began an epic journey to take him to the doc, buy a thermometer, and pick up his prescriptions.  This little jaunt took me over 5 hours, for various boring but REALLY %(*# ANNOYING reasons, during which time I was finalizing a brief that had to be filed that afternoon.  Thank heavens for the iPhone – the partner never even knew I was gone.  I felt every inch the working supermom in the empty doctor’s waiting room as I held a snoring, 47 pound Jack in my right arm and made virtually inscrutable notes on a 36 page brief with my (non-dominant) left hand, spreading pages all over the waiting room chairs, keeping Jack’s nodding head nestled on my shoulder with my jaw.  Thank heavens the partners I worked with on this brief were super ahead of the game, and we were just doing final typo-fixes.  I don’t think I had enough hands to have been capable of juggling researching on the tiny iPhone screen as well.

After the diagnosis of strep throat (“Mama!  My tongue is like a strawberry!”), I carried his heavy butt to the car in heels, picked up his brother, drove them both home, made grilled cheese sandwiches that neither one of them ate, threw up my hands and gave them crackers and grapes, and then sat down and treated myself to an entire quarter of a round of Smoked Gouda and a delicious glass of orange gatorade.**

Jack is contagious today still, so we’re home.  I’m remoted in and working and trying to stay in touch, while also keeping a low profile so as few partners as possible actually note that I’m not around.  I’m actually really run down myself right now, which is not a surprise.  It’s so easy for this little house of cards to fall apart.

But I have a good secretary, and a good working environment, and I’ll go into work on Saturday to save face, and since I have a good husband who loves spending time with his kids, he doesn’t mind that I have to do that.  As long as I don’t come down with strep throat, and as long as Liam doesn’t either (I have more non-missable events at work tomorrow), we will live to fight another day.

I hope this doesn’t happen again for a long time.

*No parent will be surprised to learn that this, itself, is a Herculean task.

**No wine treats for me – still sick.