Chloe, who is on antibiotics for a secondary infection (sinusitus), due to the chest cold on top of allergies, just woke up with some rash-y business here and there around her body parts. Scott is undergoing wisdom tooth extraction/surgery over in Cupertino at this time and while he usually weathers these kinds of things extremely well, one never knows how an extraction’s going to go until you are in the midst of extracting, so I’m waiting to see and judge for myself how the rest of the weekend might pan out for the Bollingers…you know… based on the flippin’ extraction. After the announcement and viewing of the Chloe rash, I doled out all the other meds to all the other kids, but not Chloe, of course, because I’m thinking hard about the stupid rash…and how the appearance of the rash might add to my day. I was able to have four gulps of coffee before the bull dog horked on my slipper. (She’s been on a second round of antibiotics since Wednesday but occasional rounds of horking persist.) I cleaned up the hork-mess and cursed my slipper, which will no longer have that fuzzy, cozy feel; it will be spiky and stiff from the crusted hork. Damnation. I then took the time to ask about everyone’s breathing. Each kid, standing near me in the kitchen, took a deep breath and pronounced that their oxygen intake was good. Delighted. And now…back to Chloe’s rash….allergic reaction to the antibiotics? Do we have to? The pediatrician’s office is closed on Saturday so we’ll have to check in to urgent care at the hospital to review the rash and get another kind of antibiotics even though Chloe is only two days away from completing the full round of amox that was originally prescribed. And what if I find out, while we’re waiting in urgent care, that the wisdom tooth extraction didn’t go very well and I get an urgent call from Scott asking where the hell I am because the surgeon couldn’t get the tooth out easily and he had to be given something stronger than just Novocaine so now he needs me to come pick him up pronto from the oral surgeon’s office over in Cupertino since they won’t let him drive his own car. I’ll be forced to haul rash-y girl back into the car, with Charlie and Genevieve in tow because Max wasn’t able to babysit the youngers back at the house since he had a lacrosse game to play over in Watsonville and I had to refuse helping out with the carpooling to the game because of the extraction and the rash and the horking and the Lacrosse Mom Organizer is really annoyed with me because I’m such an “old woman who lives in a shoe with so many kids she doesn’t know what to do” and I never help with any of the junior varsity lacrosse team carpooling and team dinner parent jobs and I’m so very lame. So we’ll go to pick up Scott after spending ten minutes using my Maps app on the iPhone to find the oral surgeon’s office in Cupertino and we have to get to Cupertino from all the way over in Santa Clara. We’ll finally get there, and Scott will be all doped up and in pain from the awful extraction and Chloe will be itchy from her antibiotics rash and the little kids will be all concerned about how Daddy is moaning and looking weird and swollen and drool-y in the front seat and Chloe’s constantly itching in the back seat next to them. I’ll drive everyone home, deposit wisdom-tooth husband onto the bed and Charlie will beg me to allow him to stay behind because he’s feeling a little car sick from all the frantic driving from urgent care in Santa Clara to the surgeon’s office in Cupertino and he’s pretty sure he’s going to have to puke up his Eggo waffles. The girls and I will hop back into the car, after checking on the dogs who were so rudely locked into the back deck area when we went rushing off to urgent care. Also, I’ll give Gigi a few puffs on her inhaler so that we won’t have to contend with an asthma attack on the way back to urgent care to deal with the rash. Although, since we’ll be at urgent care anyway, if something should happen with the breathing, we’ll be in the right place to attend to it.

I’m really worried that this is how the rest of my Saturday might go. Stupid rash. Stupid wisdom teeth. Stupid asthma. Stupid hork messes on my slippers. I take some more gulps of my coffee before punching in the number for the 24/7 Nurse Hotline at Kaiser Permanente, our health care provider. I’m hoping I’ll get Betty. I really like her and she and I have talked more than a few times during the last couple of weeks about the various health concerns at chez Bollinger. Yes. I’m really hoping to speak with Betty about the stupid rash.