Sick Days

Yesterday started out a beautiful day. It was Tuesday and the beginning of our week since we took Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off. The birds were singing the sun was shining. There was a hint of spring in the air as a warm front had moved through our valleys and cleared out all the gunk. But it is January.

I guess February (and I can't help but imagine January, too) is the month when sickness goes all out. It has started here.

By 9:30 we had sent home 3 kids who had thrown up. In the school. And no custodian as he was at a district meeting. I found the "barf seed" and went around the school sprinkling my magic barf fairy dust and putting up yellow cones of barf doom.

I don't care where they throw up as long as it is not in the office. The third one, a 6th grader came in looking distraught saying, "I just threw up in the hall." I looked and it was all over him.
Then he starts doing that urp-y thing when their cheeks puff and their eyes bulge and he's dry heaving but you know it's not going to be dry and I yell, "Don't just stand there run into the bathroom!" Of course most of them don't know we have a restroom in the office. It's kind of in a corner of the nurse's room. He looks at me all wild eyed as if to say, "You are yelling at me in a strange language I can't understand, Lady, and I'm supposed to do WHAT about it?" So I get him headed into the right area while I started my search for the barf seed. Luckily, he made it.

They don't always make it though. Every so often they just stand in front of me and start the barfing. My child did it once. But I was out of town so I didn't have to deal with it.

By the way the 4th one happened during lunch. Right in his lunch tray. That was pretty good aim, I'd say. Too bad it was pizza day.