In Which My Son Is Totally Pathetic And Things Are Not Set Aflame

We had dinner with some friends last night at Sushi Hana in Mount Washington. I hadn't been to that location before, but the food was even better than the Towson one. We ordered a metric ton of food, and one of our dining companions noticed another table receiving a tray of Mystery Rolls which had been ignited and were burning quite impressively. She asked the waitress to add "the burning thing" to our order. But after we had gorged ourselves on an immodest array of foodstuffs, we realized that the flaming suhsi had never arrived. We were disappointed but too stuffed to do anything about it. Yay for an excuse to go back and eating flaming things!

We went to The Papermoon for dessert, which always brings back fond memories of college, because I practically lived on their barstools for a few semesters. I'd sit in a dark corner and smoke horrifying amounts of cigarettes while studying ghost cells or muscle insertions or some crap. But I quit smoking over 7 years ago, and you can't smoke in there anymore anyway, which as a Libertarian I deplore and as an individual person who thinks cigarettes are flagrantly stupid, I like. In any case, we had the bread pudding. It was good, but the Dark Side of the Moon cake is superior.

So. We get home at around 10:30 or so. At 11 AlmondBoy awakes, screaming as though he is undergoing some sort of ancient Chinese torture designed for maximum volume output. He said his mouth hurt. Then he screamed some more. The only breaks in his hour-long screamathon were (1) yawning from exhasution (2) vomiting up the pain medicine I gave him. So Mr. Marzipan took him to the ER while I stayed home and fretted. AlmondBoy continued to scream until someone there gave him oxycodone and put everyone out of his misery. They diagnosed him with a pretty severe ear infection, of which he has already had like a dozen. He and Mr. Marzipan got home around 2 AM. We snuggled into bed and enjoyed an interlude of sleep.

At 5 AM, there was more screaming. Because AlmondBoy had thrown up all over his bed. One bath and some laundry later, we were all back in bed. I dozed off again at 6.

AlmondGirl poked me awake at 7 to let me know she was slowly starving to death and needed breakfast NOW or she'd probably waste away to nothing and could I get UP. I lacked the energy to ask her if some kind of memory wipe had done away with her ability to peel bananas or obtain cheese or open a granola bar. Mr. Marzipan escorted her downstairs, we he discovered that one of the cats, in a grand gesture of interspecies solidarity with AlmondBoy, had thrown up on the table.

I made bread and strawberry jam to keep myself awake. I did laundry. I sang a disturbing amount of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. AlmondBoy spent a largish part of the day in his skeleton pajamas, languishing on the couch, rotting his brain with Bugs Bunny. (Secret Mom Confession: Sick kids are really cuddly, which is so sweet.) Later on, two of our friends came over to visit this afternoon and brought me some Gnosis Immunity Boost chocolate on account of I am looking like Death's spinster aunt these days. They are homeopathic, all-natural, yoga type people and seemed rather horrified that we are planning to have tubes put in AlmondBoy's ears. They gave us the number of a lady who does [thing] with infrared light. I'm fairly openminded and trend towards granolaism in some ways, but I'm also a member of the Well Why Don't We Just Try Some SCIENCE Up In This Joint? School of Not Being Ill. But I'm going to call, because anesthesia makes me twitchy and, hey, what the hell?