Illness in the house.

I came home from the music department cabaret about an hour and-a-half ago to find my son responding rather poorly to some kind of gastro-intestinal infection. Apparently very shortly after I took Little Princess and two of her friends to the department (at about 8 p.m.), he started running from both ends and was still going at it when I got home. His body temperature is way below normal and he�s absolutely freezing. Trying to get him to sip water just seems to stimulate him to new wretching, and even though he should be completely emptied out by now, he still has the urge to move his bowels. My concern is dehydration, of course, and the fact that his core temperature is so low. I first heated up the bean bag in the microwave and gave him that to hold onto, but he discarded it because it was too hot and made him uncomfortable. Now I have a heating pad in his bed set on the lowest setting, and as soon as I am sure he is sleeping I will unplug it. This is very worrisome. The poor kid is in agony.

Cabaret was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. I really went because I wanted to hear Little Princess� band play, but their drummer was so loud that I could hear only her. Everyone was amplified, including my daughter with her brand-new violin pickup, and I could only hear the congas far away underneath everything and the lead singer�s voice but not his words, because the drummer drowned them all out. They were all pretty upset. I gave the singer a ride home and he was very bummed out. But you learn from experience, and they had none up to this point.

The theme for the evening was �superhero�, so many people dressed up in some kind of costume. For the occasion I was �Hemi-demi-semi-quaver Woman�. I wore a red exercise leotard dating from the days when I used to do aerobics, knee-high black boots, my daughter�s blue mini skirt with a matching cape pinned to my shoulders, and a 16th-note cut out of black felt pinned to my stomach. It should really have been a 32nd-note, but I wasn�t up to cutting out all those flags. I sat with one of my students who would otherwise have sat the whole evening by herself, and had one beer. Apart from Little Princess� band, there were many other acts, mostly kids from the department, but also a few outsiders. The department accompanist sang J0ni Mitchell�s B0th Sides N0w, accompanying herself, and then she was joined for a duet of Big Spender by a former student of mine who graduated two years ago and has been studying in Paris since. That was quite the surprise.

Earlier in the day, I drove into Sh�brooke to pick Little Princess up at her friend the conga man�s place because they had been to the music store to buy her pickup. We stopped at BIack Cat and had a piece of cake to celebrate six years of selling used books. I also had a long chat with my mom on the phone and went out with Buddy Boy to buy coffee and pick up some supplies at the grocery store.

I�m very tired and I really want to go to bed, but I�m terribly concerned about Buddy Boy. Hubby is still feeling under the weather too, and I want him to go to bed. But he has built a fire in the stove in an attempt to warm the house (it�s freezing outside) and won�t go to bed until his son is asleep. I hate having a sick child. At any age, it�s still a drag.

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