Update on This Might be the Year

Well, the first round of antibiotics didn't cure the z-man's strep throat. Time to move to round two.

I found this article interesting since I was considering moving my family into a bubble house. I guess I better get all the correct permits before I start building.

Ten hours a day, every day, Elizabeth Feudale-Bowes confines herself to a galvanized-steel-and-porcelain shed outside her house. Inside are a toilet, a metal cabinet, a box spring with the metal coils exposed, and a pile of organic cotton blankets. Aluminum foil covers the window. The place is as austere as a prison cell — but it's also her sanctuary from an outside world that she says makes her violently ill.

She and her husband call the structure "the bubble."

This bubble, though, may be about to burst: A judge has ordered it taken down by the end of the month.

Some of the couple's neighbors in suburban South Whitehall Township complained that the 160-square-foot building is unstable and so unsightly it could drag down their property values. The couple also hooked up electrical, water and sewer service without securing permits.

"For the wife's medical problems, there is sympathy. For the owner's defiance of the township's lawful directives, there is no excuse," Judge Carol McGinley ruled earlier this month.

This might just be the year

Remember the movie " The boy in the Bubble?" Ya know, the one about the boy who has a damaged immune system, so he's forced to live in a very sterile environment inside a plastic bubble?

Well, every year I threaten my family that this year will be the year. The year that I force my family to live in a plastic bubble.

Usually the threats don't start until sometime around Dec., when all the snotty nosed kids at school start infecting my angels with all their nasty little germs. Schools are, of course, just one big petri dish of disease.

This year, however the plagues have already started.

Last week my oldest son was home for 2 days with an incredibly disgusting cold.

A few days later, the z-man stayed home with a slight fever and was feeling "blobby".
( he likes to make up words to describe his various illnesses).

Then, yesterday, the z-man gets a fever of 103 and white pus on his tonsils. He slept ALL DAY. The boy was one sick pup.

I hate, hate, hate it when the kiddos are sick. Especially when they use words like weak, shakey, blobby and dying to describe how they are feeling. And when they feel so bad they start crying. That's when my imagination goes into overdrive. I become convinced that the sick child is becoming severely dehydrated, has meningitis or perhaps polio. That's right, I am convinced that my child will be the first child to contract polio in 50 years. Or maybe it's whooping cough or scarlet fever or pneumonia, or mad cow disease, or the asian bird flue or perhaps they're the victim of biological warfare.

I'm a mom. It's my job to worry about the worst case scenario.

So, with three illnesses already in the books since school started, I'm predicting that this just might be " the year".

Just in case I think I'll start collecting supplies...bubble wrap, plastic wrap, tarps, air filtration systems and LOTS and LOTS of LYSOL.