Can We Push Christmas Back a Few Weeks?

I'm running a little behind.

Dudes.

My daughter Jane (8) has been sick for roughly, oh, what feels like a YEAR now. Yesterday, we made our third visit to the doctor's office in ten days. First she had a sinus infection. Then she got a stomach bug on top of that, along with a nice five-day fever. She was so sick...she couldn't even eat for five days. She lost weight she didn't have to lose. But she pulled it together to go to school yesterday to perform in her Winter Concert.

Only...

It was...

About half way through, I shut the camcorder off and made my way to the front to take her offstage and home.

The kid was so miserable, it was PALPABLE. It was awful. It broke my heart.

So we went BACK to the doctor and found out that NOW she has an ear infection. More antibiotics.

Today? I am keeping her home because she needs to eat once an hour.

I'm SO not kidding.

Her stomach has shrunk so much that she can't eat the food she needs and she's operating at a big deficit already, so she's RAVENOUS. I am spending all of my time cooking for her. It would be hilarious but honestly, there's nothing so funny about having a sick child. Nevertheless, for your amusement, it's 2:00 PM and so far today, Jane has eaten:

3 Gabby Specials (Named after Jane's best friend at school, a Gabby Special is a piece of peanut butter toast with the crusts cut off. I tell Jane every single time that toast is ALL CRUST and she should just bite into it but she isn't buying it.)
1 doughnut
Ramen
Farfalle Puglia, leftover from the Italian Restaurant we love
lasagna
pudding

May I just have a moment on a totally different subject, though?

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote THIS COLUMN about my, um, ISSUES with UPS. Obviously, since Jane has been home sick and I have been housebound for ten solid days, I have done a LOT of shopping on-line. Including buying myself a new area rug for our living room because the one we had before had been dubbed the Sydney Rug of Shame during her incontinent phase and although it had been cleaned within an inch of removing all of the wool and just remaking the darn thing, every time I saw it, I thought about my old dog and how much I missed her.

So, I bought a new rug.

Today, I had one of my garage doors open while I was unloading some groceries and somehow, in between trips, a UPS truck snuck up my driveway and deposited a very large area rug in the empty bay where my car should go.

I had to pick up this 65-pound rug and haul it out of my garage and up to the front door, up the stairs and into the living room. Using my patented fall-on-my-face, skin-both-knees, moon-the-neighbors dismount, I got the darn thing inside and unrolled. I love it. Our furniture is all rearranged because of the Christmas Tree but you get the basic idea. Orange Tabby Approved!

Actually, I shouldn't be crabby with the UPS guys because, dudes, we're having our first real bonafide snowstorm! More about that later --the cry has gone out for another Gabby Special.

Blink-O-Meter: Only one strand still (stubbornly) not blinking, despite my overt threats to cut it into tiny pieces after Christmas.