House Arrest

Nothing clears my calendar like a sick child. I go to bed, thinking the day ahead is planned, only to be awoken at 5 AM by the low mournful moan, "Mom." Half awake, feet feeling for my slippers, I contemplate what is it about that tone of Mom that draws me away from Harrison Ford's smile.

I've had two weeks of clearing calendars; first one cherub then the other. I didn't so much miss my mammograms, note the plural... But I seriously doubt, since it involved canceling two appointments, the original and its replacement, that the receptionist believes I even have children. Instead she's thinking, "Likely excuse... This woman doesn't like to have her breasts pressed rice paper thin; chicken." The next one is in two weeks... I wonder if I'll make it. Maybe just uttering the word mammogram opens up a viral portal to the intestines of the child sitting closest to me... mammogram... oh wait that one is already sick...

Also I didn't mind missing my weekly volunteer stint stuffing Friday Folders at the school. It was distribution week, the week where every children's service organization and their uncles send information home via the students' backpacks. Information regarding camps, educational programs, insurance, fund raisers, town programs, my Aunt Martha's programs, you get the picture. One time (in band camp*) there were 20 flyers to be collated and sent home. In this house, on those days, when I go through the Friday Folders, I stand by the recycle bin.

I do mind missing my walks, and my banjo lesson, food shopping, my freedom to run out on and errand for this or that, and visiting my uncle who is laid up. But the house has never been cleaner, as I've made headway plowing through the clutter that collects. Of course, the one who is home is finding all sorts of ways to undo my good deeds. Regardless, I have found a lost library book, music books, a lone slipper, three odd buttons, and a Barbie puzzle piece.

I wonder if I'll be let out tomorrow? I'm sure we'll all be in the pink healthwise, and that the pending snow storm will keep us all buttoned up together, tight. Then someone will whisper mammogram, and I'll come down with the latest and greatest intestine twisting distress.




* If you don't get the reference, there really isn't anything I can do for you.