The Gauntlet

      We've come through the gauntlet. That's what it feels like around here. Eight weeks. In the gauntlet of cold, and flu, and pink eye, ear infections, and bronchitis, and probably a ton more germs that we've encountered and miraculously conquered. Oh I don't even want to know. Like head lice at gym daycare. We didn't get it, thank God, but the thought of it made me scratch my head for days (and just now, again).
       Everyone tells me this is just the way it is when your kid starts school. Everyone in your house gets sick. I somehow thought Carson had enough exposure at gym daycare. When I can muster the courage, I drop him in that petri dish of snot and God knows what else with a cacophony of crying children who's mothers or fathers also can't take  it for another f*cking minute without the calming force of a work-out. And I get it man, I've stopped judging all of you who unload kiddos no matter what is oozing out of their nose or butts-- really, I get it. Sometimes you just need to go for a run, or to take a shower without someone pulling the curtain back.  What you doing in there Mommy?  Sometimes the edge of insanity is just so close that whatever they've got doesn't seem that bad, and you weigh the trade off: being a monster to my kids, or adding to the petri dish? Which evil do I choose today? Most of the time I am polite, I keep my kids home when they have runny noses.  After all, they're sick, they need to rest. But having spent the last 8 weeks in the Gauntlet, I can see how there are "degrees" of health. Like when they always have a runny nose. Or when that cough lasts 4 weeks.  We'd all be morbidly obese and insane if we rat-holed ourselves inside that whole time.

Our little Vector on his first day of school.

      It got so bad around here I actually hired a micro-biologist to come do a "healthy home" assessment on our house. I was convinced we had some kind of toxic mold that was making us all sick. And in typical Rachel style, not just a micro-biologist, a forensic micro-biologist. He showed up with this rolling case full of equipment--a laptop, a tripod with some sort of expensive air sampling machine, a microscope.  It was damn CSI around here. He took swabs of dust from all over our home (and there was plenty to swab). His conclusion was that though we do have some elevated levels of mold in the basement, it's nothing we can't clean up with a little elbow grease and a sponge, and God forbid, a DUST RAG. And it's not enough to make us sick. So, our little vector, Carson, is the culprit.
      I'm hoping we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with the illnesses. We all have gone to taking our vitamins with dedication, but I know it will take at least a few weeks for my immune system to catch up. Hopefully this is not the new stasis-- someone in my home being sick at all times. Friends tell us this lasts for about two years and then you are superhuman and nothing gets you sick. Oh God, we're still in The Guantlet.  Are you on the other side? Will we survive?