Still tons of snow on the ground here in Irving, Texas today. The snow stopped falling sometime during the night but it is not melting like we had hoped that it would and the world here is still covered in slush although the roads really are not too bad.
Liesl was feeling pretty bad this morning. Her cough is even worse than yesterday and she is clearly very sick. We had wanted to have gotten her in to see the doctor yesterday but due to a mix up with our new plan we had to wait until today but Dominica was able to get her scheduled for first thing this morning – which ended up being an hour or two later because of the roads and the medical staff mostly did not go into the office today.
I was supposed to go to the doctor’s office with Dominica and Liesl but we were all running late and we had decided that if they were ready to go that they would just go to the doctor’s without me and I would catch up. The office is literally right across the street – the same distance that it takes to walk to our car that is inside of the building. But Dominica and Liesl left without telling me and while I knew the office complex to which to go I did not know what doctor or practice they were going to. I also wasn’t sure if they had just stepped outside for a minute or not. Dominica’s phone was dead so we were not able to call each other. So they ended up going alone and I just worked for the office.
It ended up taking two hours at the doctor’s office, so in reality it was best that I didn’t go as today ended up being a highly disrupted day for my work as it was. The verdict was that Liesl has a strep infection in her sinuses. Poor little girl. So she needs to go on antibiotics again, just a couple weeks after going on them for her ear infection. It also means that it is almost certain that I have a strep infection as well.
The roads were good enough that Dominica and Liesl were going to take off straight away to drive down to League City for Madeline’s tenth birthday part weekend and sleepover. But I mentioned that taking Liesl there as a strep carrier that is still contagious might be like sending a Genoese rat down to all those tween girls and that strep would be spreading like the plague. Not to even mention that Francesca is pregnant and getting strep would not be ideal for her either.
So Dominica and Francesca debated whether or not they should go for about an hour and finally gave up on the idea. So I have the girls home with me this weekend which is nice because it is a long, holiday weekend. The only issue is that I blocked off this entire weekend to get rest and to get loads of work done so that is going to be much, much harder now with them here. So my productivity is not going to be nearly what we had hoped that it would have been, unfortunately.
Once we knew that the girls were not traveling today and that the car would be available we scheduled with CareNow to get me an appointment to see a doctor as well. There is pretty much no way that I do not have strep given that Liesl does and that I have been so sick for so long.
They got us right in and we drove out to Grapevine so that I could see the doctor. The good news that we learned is that I am officially a bit lighter than I was the last time that I saw a doctor and my blood pressure is quite good – not amazing or anything like that but of no concern at all which is amazing as I am always fearful that I will have high blood pressure especially these days with all of the moving and work hours. The stress has been much higher than usual.
The diagnosis was, as expected, strep. I’ve probably had it for a long time. So I got a prescription to an antibiotic and we drove back home and went to CVS and dropped off the scripts and went to Sonic to get some lunch. It was a quick lunch, picked up the scripts and got back to the house. It is definitely good that we saw the doctor today as I got much, much sicker as the day progressed and by the late afternoon I had a horrible, horrible cough that is as bad as it was in September.
My afternoon was spent working via BlackBerry mostly and on the phone almost the entire day. It was a very busy day considering how sick I was. Luckily several people at the office were helping me out as I felt awful and my Internet connection was mostly useless – I suspect because we have tens of thousands of people working from home today causing some severe congestion.
We ordered in pizza for dinner but I only had two slices, just not hungry. I went to bed super early at a quarter until ten! That is the earliest that I can remember going to bed in a very, very long time. It was hard to get to sleep, though, as Liesl would sneak into our bedroom and jump on me trying to get me to play with her or to read her her “Hippos Go Berserk” book that is currently her favourite. We read it so often that I have it memorized now. Oreo came to bed with me and snuggled. It was an hour or two at least before Dominica and Liesl went to bed.
So tomorrow we will just all be home, attempting to recover. I might go down and make use of the coffee bar at Tuscan Villas to get some work done in the quiet there. They have wireless Internet access and free, high quality coffee, tea and cocoa so it is a good place to get away and concentrate on all of the writing that I need to be doing this weekend. At least I am starting the weekend with SGL up to date and with some of my Saturday work done for me by Harsh so that I would not have so much to do tomorrow.