The endless illness

Last week Friday, I had this odd thought that I needed to leave work to pick up my daughter, who had vomited at school. Several hours later, I got a call saying as much.

This morning, I got a call from the school to pick up my son, who was feverish and nauseous. As I picked him up, I thought I'd have to pick up his older brother for the same reason. Several hours later, I had to do exactly that.

It took my daughter two days to recover, so I'm expecting the same. What this means is that I'm going to be missing some work. That in itself isn't so bad, I'm ok with it. The problem is there's certain paperwork that only three people can do. One of them just up and left a few months ago, and the other is on vacation for two weeks. That leaves just me, and this stuff is time sensitive. 

Friday, I got the call just after noon, paperwork is always done by then. Today, I had it done just before the school called. (Sometimes it takes very little time, freeing up my day for more satisfying work).

My wife works 9:30-1:30 while I work 7-3:30, and she can't leave work the same way I can. So I'm going to see how fast I can get it done tomorrow morning before I have to leave to manage sick kids. I'm considering going in early, I mean they gave me a key. It's weird to realize I'm thinking like this.

And when did I develop this precognition regarding my offsprings illnesses?

The weird box

Ok, so I ordered something online (as we frequently do in this day and age), and it arrived in a box much larger than it needed. I was expecting this, because it was frequently mentioned (and pictured) in the user reviews. So when this oversized box stealthily arrived on my porch (I was sitting right by the window, they should not have been able to move something that large so... unseen) I hastily opened it so as to dispose of said box (A large cardboard box? In a house full of children? Madness I say) when to my surprise a proverbial Matryoshka appears. Another box, sealed, complete with UPS label, was sitting inside the oversized box. 

They shipped from the same city, but when I checked the tracking it only said "on the way". It also had warning stickers about batteries and it's addressed to a wireless company, so I can imagine it's probably someone's cell phone.

As much as I like to solve a mystery, I'm not opening the box. I'm taking it to a UPS store (It's a Saturday, the  as soon as they open. I don't want someone else's cell phone. Or tablet. Or hotspot. Nope, do not want. I don't need that noise, or hassle. I can imagine whoever is expecting this battery laden parcel probably doesn't want to deal with losing it, either. 

What an odd thing.

Informational firehose

Having four kids in the public school system, I'm constantly amazed at the sheer volume of information they're sending home with the kids. Not just what they send home, but the never ending emails. The emails telling me to log in to the oddly named systems to check the messages on them.

What bugs me is most of the information is either redundant or useless. But if I dare not check a message, that's where the important stuff will be. It's a gambit to see how much of my time they can waste.

Bad news

My wife has cancer.

Ok, I can say more than that. It's breast cancer. They already did a biopsy, and there was no sign of cancer in the nearby lymph node, but we haven't heard back about the biopsy on the tumor itself. The doctor (with his 40+ years dealing with this type of cancer) is optimistic, so I'm going to go with that.

The timing, however, is pretty horrible considering I just attended two funerals in the last month for people who lost a fight with cancer. Meanwhile, I choose to be optimistic.

And so went another

 https://obits.syracuse.com/us/obituaries/syracuse/name/r-stuetz-obituary?id=36367062

Kent Stuetz was one of those guys I've known pretty much my entire life. He moved into the area in 1991, and his kids were my age. So of course I would meet this man that was my parents age. He taught my primary class, and as I aged into the youth program he also moved up and taught there. Later he was my bishop during the latter years in the program. Of course he kept being my bishop into my adulthood, afterward switching into sunday school teacher for years. After I moved out of the ward (and in with my new wife) he wound up in stake callings, and continued to find himself in some sort of stewardship position.

He was my Mister Feeny, and it's weird realizing that.

I also annoyed him... a lot. Of course there were times when we were teasing each other, but I'm talking about when he knew I could do better, but wasn't. He didn't like to admit it, but he held me to a high standard, and was annoyed when I didn't live up to it. 

I should have been a pall bearer. I had a lot of experience letting him down.

(If I didn't tell at least one joke, he'd have been annoyed yet again)