Alphanumeric Flu

Hello friends, I've just reentered society. After a five day brutal battle with the dreaded alphanumeric flu.

Izzo, Truman and I have been locked in the house since last Friday. And I wish I could spin it so there was snuggling, getting better, flowers and such. But, um... This flu sucked. It took the air and energy out of all in it’s path.

We spent hours watching PBS. Thank the Lord that with the digital channels, we have PBS kids cartoons nearly round the clock. There were many four hour stretches, between juice cup filling and medicine getting that we stared at the TV. Three immovable soldiers on a red, cushy floating barge. They knew I was sick if they were allowed to watch cartoon after cartoon.

Finally on Monday, we were feeling a little bit better—but with cabin fever. And a blessed package came in the mail. It made for a break in the monotony, and it contained all of the perfect ingredients intended for a impromptu pajama party, which indeed, we were days into. Unknowing of our impending plight, my beautiful sister packed a box with new jammies, a new dinosaur pop-up book, two of the Miss Spider books, a new DVD short and cake mix complete with frosting, sprinkles and cute cupcake cups.

This would have made for a fun evening, sure, but it was like GOLD in the midst of our gray existence up to this point.

Since we were watching ungodly amounts of TV, but had learned all about dinosaurs from our favorite cartoon of the moment, Dinosaur Train! We devoured the Dinosaur pop-up book. The kid scoured the book, and there were no pterodactyls. Wow, really? A 20 minute conversation insued between a two and three year old on the omission of their favorite dinosaur?? Gasp. “Mom, how could this be?” Dramatic, but true. A little web surving concludes they are not dinosaurs. I did not break the news yet.

Plus, this is no 1980’s novelty popup book. This is serious, Robert Sabuda. Have you seen the rest of his books? We’re blessed with Alice in Wonderland and another one I can't remember off the top of my head. We have 600 Black Spots (not by Robert Sabuda but of the same caliber). Treasures, at our house.

We set out first to make the cupcakes, sent but we only had two eggs not three like the box called for. I explained this to Isabel and her flat response was, “find a 2 egg recipe.”

Muffling a giggle, I looked all over the box hoping for another recipe, and there it was a two-egg-boxed-cake-into-cookies-recipe. Perfect. I baked up a few gave each of the kids one to ‘decorate’ [read cough and sneeze all over]. The rest of the 3 dozen were frosted by my clean hands, and boxed away for later medicine-taking bribing.

New jammies are a novelty at any point in life, right? But for the kids, it made the days of waiting a little more exciting. I should remember this. Keep a stash of new jammies on hand for the next infectious disease outbreak.

Hope you all have a healthy week!


Photo from sxc.hu