The importance of asking the right question

'How many beers did I drink last night?' I thought to myself through a keg-sized headache in the wee hours of last night.

It was the wrong question. Besides, I only drank three light stubbies. This was more a sinus headache.

I dragged myself out of bed and made my way to the kitchen. It actually hurt to open my eyes so I could see where I was going.

"Where the hell are the painkillers?" I mumbled, pulling out our medicine boxes from above the fridge.

Again, it was the wrong question.

After the third box I finally found four sinus tablets, although I only had the night time tablets left.

'Should I take one or two?' I thought through a thumping wave of pain.

Wrong question.

I downed two tablets and settled back to bed. As my head hit the pillow I heard birds twittering outside my window and noticed the rumble of a few cars passing on the road outside.

Which was when the question I should have been asking all along occurred to me.

'What time is it?'

Turns out it wasn't about 1am, like I thought, but rather the dawn side of 6am. Within minutes the dark started to dissipate. So it turned out I took two (essentially) sleeping tablets just as I was about to get dressed and go to work.

While my body went through the motions today, my brain didn't snap awake until closer to 2 this afternoon.

Let's just say it was a long, foggy day - but at least my headache was gone.

Revenge of the Chicken

High on my list of things I like to do on a Saturday night is sitting in a hospital waiting room with two overtired children.

Master19 has returned home for a couple of days and I'd cooked us up some nice chicken cutlets for dinner tonight. No sooner had we eaten our meal when I was bathing the girls and noticed some marks on Miss7, who had a slight fever this morning, & Miss4.

Deciding we were probably dealing with Chicken Pox, given the time of the year and our sort of luck (the type Alanis Morissette was singing about in Ironic), I took them down to the hospital - with Tracey pregnant we felt we needed to know what we were dealing with sooner rather than later.

When the nurse asked to see Miss4's stomach and back I lifted up her nightie and we all simultaneously discovered Miss4 hadn't put undies on. 

Naturally, my children were beautifully behaved, if by 'beautifully behaved' we mean they didn't knife anyone or set fire to trash cans. If you take the definition to mean they were quiet and respectful of each other's personal space, then not so much.

Back in the waiting area I exhausted myself trying to keep Miss4's legs together and her nightie covering her bits - an incredibly difficult task given that she thought it was hilarious she could wiggle her butt monster at strangers.

Learning from waiting rooms the world over, the hospital has installed a huge screen telly to keep the wannabe patients distracted. Unfortunately when we sat down I realized the second Jurassic Park was screening. As it was near the end I kept my daughters attention firmly on myself for five minutes while a mummy T-Rex fed  her baby some bloke. 

Another five minutes we discovered it was a Jurassic Park marathon, as the third movie in the series started up, so I asked them to change the channel. They put on football. I don't like watching sport much unless it's the back story in a movie, but at least nobody was being eaten.

After an hour, when it appeared we weren't getting in anytime soon to see a Doctor, I left Master19 with the girls and ducked home (we're less than 2km from the hospital) for some undies and drawing supplies to keep them occupied.

Master19 said I'd been gone about a minute when he received a message from my facebook: hi Geoffrey. I am off to bed now. If they are chicken pox please call my mobile. I will only be having a nanny nap. I hope you are having an awesome time! lol  

Thinking I'd deserted him, he said his first reaction was, "You bastard!" Then he remembered I would never ask him to call my mobile because I don't know which button to press to answer it, so it must have been Tracey.

Three hours later we were home with a positive diagnosis for Miss4 - she has a terrifying and untreatable case of butt monster. 

Miss7 just has Chicken Pox.