Fevers > Hurricane & Earthquake

Though last week we had an earthquake and a hurricane, both boys had bad fevers for several days, which proved more disastrous for our household.

Not that the earthquake wasn’t unnerving. I was putting the boys down for a nap when the house started shaking. My first thought was that it was an earthquake, followed quickly by, “But we don’t have earthquakes here.” I had no idea what do to. Take the boys both in my arms down three flights of stairs? Corral all three of us in a doorframe? Instead I think I shrieked like a lunatic because then Clark ran around like a little a parrot shouting, “What in the world?!” Their toy barnyard started mooing up on the shelf, some books fell down, and the icemaker was kicked on in the freezer. I turned on the TV but all that I saw was soaps, Sesame Street, and the local “live” weather channel that seemed creepily prerecorded. I thought maybe the shaking had been an extremely low-flying aircraft of the super-spy type until Brian called and said it was an earthquake. Scary. It took awhile for my heart to stop racing and my hands and the flowers in my window boxes to stop shaking.

Then Saturday we were excited, in a way that only a natural disaster can make you excited, about the imminent hurricane. Probably no one but hardcore surfers would admit to being excited about such a thing. Perhaps nervous or wary, but not excited. So we hunkered down for Hurricane Irene. (great word, hunkered) We had water, we had ice, we had lights, we had batteries, and we had a really long and boring day inside with two fussy, feverish boys. Later at night the wind and rain picked up but it wasn’t even strong enough to knock over the dying pine tree in the front of our building that I really wanted to fall down, or wake up the boys.  Our lights didn’t even flicker. Overall a real letdown for us and our preparations, though I know I should be glad. Tons of people had damage and power outages; there were even sad situations where people lost their lives. I should count our blessings…and I do. I was just hoping for a bit more spectacle.

Cal gets even better bed-head when he's feverish.

Sandwiched between the earthquake and hurricane was the onset of two fevers. Clark fell asleep on the floor one night early and soon after was burning up with a fever. The next day I had sick little Clarky who only wanted to rock on the rocking horse and listen to Jimmy Buffet, (That seriously was the only thing that would make him stop crying a few times.) and active, happy Cal who wanted to run and jump and play… on top of Clark. So we were stuck inside and away from friends and then inevitably Cal caught the fever, probably from all the open-mouth kissing he likes to do. A lot of inside hours of Tylenol and Ibuprofen-administration and mom-worrying like I shouldn’t do, but always do anyway. Overall the fevers were much more off-putting and long-lasting for us than the natural disasters…but I guess fevers are disasters of nature as well.