Election Day News

Alexander has the pink eye! He's been nursing a yucked-up cold for more than a week now, and yesterday his eyes started to look equally yucky. I called our doctor. The nurse said we could take a wait-and-see approach since he hadn't had a fever and still had all his enthusiasm for life.

I was fully prepared to keep him home from Montessori school today. (Did I mention, BTW, that I'm not subbing anymore and, therefore, the children are no longer in their afternoon schools? More on this subject later.) Even though his nose and eyes looked better this morning, I elected to keep him home. Hey, I don't want to be the blame for sending my child to school knowing that he might be infectious and spreading something around. That's among my worst mommy fears! I was scheduled to be at the school this morning myself volunteering to teach math (ha, me? math?) to kindergarteners. Obviously, I couldn't go if the boy was home sick.

I'm so glad I didn't send him because within a few hours his eyes grew just as mucous-laden and reddish as they were yesterday. So we went to the doctor later in the afternoon and she confirmed the diagnosis. It is bilateral, meaning in both eyes. Normally, I think, pink eye is only in one eye. There are various causes of pink eye and his basically is likely due to this cold he's had.

He'll stay home again tomorrow (Wednesday), and the doctor said that once he's taken his antibiotics for 24 hours then he should no longer be contagious and can even attend school on Thursday.

I'm hoping that, unlike the strep that went through the house last May, no one else in the household catches the pink eye. Anna was the only one who did not get strep. She must have a super strong immune system, so I'm hoping she'll escape this little medical concern.

After dropping Anna off at school this morning, I let Alexander run around town with me before returning to pick her up three hours later. We stopped for coffee and hashbrowns, then went to two hardware stores and three election polling places!

Yes, I was determined to vote. The polling place originally listed on my voting card had been moved to another nearby location. But when I got there, I found a big sandwich board saying that the polling station was at yet a new nearby location! After voting, I even agreed to fill out an election survey. Even though it was anonymous, it felt a tad bit liberating because I don't like to sign my name to much of anything. I even attended a Free Tibet concert once in Chicago and felt I just couldn't sign my name to a petition to actually free Tibet. So, despite his sickness (which he didn't seem to even know he had, the way he was playing with his little bull dozer), Alexander got a close-up civics lesson this morning.