Over the past few weeks and months, the Buried family has been hit with all sorts of maladies.
Allergies, colds, bad hangovers, sinus infections, strep throat, stomach bugs; there’s hardly an illness of some kind that hasn’t been circulating in our home since January. Mom and Buried and The Hammer seem to catch everything. For Mom and Buried, it’s probably a result of her MS-compromised immune system and its attendant medications, and for The Hammer it’s probably a result of being in first grade.
Elementary schools are gross and little kids are grosser and apparently The Hammer is the grossest because he’s basically had a stuffed nose and lingering cough since the school year started. And he’s missed a bunch of school because of it.
Look, I don’t know where you stand on Covid-19 and vaccinations and conspiracies or whatever, and I don’t care. But I think we can all agree that when we were all wearing masks, we weren’t getting sick as much! On the flipside, before Covid, we were a lot more cavalier about being sick, and about bringing our colds or whatever else into work and school where other people could catch it.
We used to just suck it up. The occasional cold was just the cost of doing business, i.e. earning money at work or getting an education at school. But not anymore!
Maybe it’s different where you live, but these days, by office, and my kids’ schools, aren’t messing around with germs. I can and do and am encouraged to work from home on any day I feel under the weather, rather than infect all my colleagues. And if one of my kids has a stubbed toe, I get a phone call demanding we come pick him up before he’s even reached the nurse’s office!
I don’t blame the schools. I blame the school nurses! Just kidding, sort of.
I get the policy, but sometimes it seems like the healthcare professionals at school are dying to wash their hands of kids no matter what their problem, or what line they lay on the kids. My 7yo scrapes his knee and asks to go home and next thing you know we’re getting a call from the nurse, who puts the weepy kid on the phone and forces us to disappoint him because the nurse doesn’t want to be the bad guy! But I digress.
Summer is coming - it may even already be here for you (that’s not a climate change joke; in NYC our kids don’t get out of school for another month!). The last thing we need is more sickness to contend with when it’s finally nice out. But something tells me the less time my kids spend around other kids, the healthier they’ll be. And that goes for your kids too.
Worse comes to worse, it’s a good excuse to avoid those kids you don’t like. Including your own!
Social Media Round-up
(It seems like they’ve changed the way these display, so you may have to click through to see the full posts!)
Pop Culture Stuff
Last week I had a heavy pop culture report: we saw a comedy show, I watched a movie, I even shared a playlist. This week has been busy and thus is much lighter. I was supposed to see an advance screening of a big summer movie but that didn’t work out (took my 12yo to grab a burger at one of my favorite spots in Manhattan instead, so it’s all good).
Like everyone else, we’re eagerly awaiting the Succession series finale, which we may or may not get to when it airs - though it’s hard to wait on an episode like that, what with spoilers and all - because we’re traveling to Connecticut to visit family over the long weekend. And we’re stopping somewhere else on the way that I’ll surely have something to say about next week! Stay tuned.
And have a great Memorial Day weekend!
Can't wait for the holiday weekend--seeing one of my best buddies from law school, who I haven't see in over seven years!