In Which Connor Stays Home Again And I Become A Criminal

It's day ten of the Epic Sickness Saga we've been embarked upon around here.  I'm currently making black rice pudding with salted coconut as an afternoon snack and doing all of the laundry in the house.  Connor is amusing himself by watching The Pirates of Penzance and attempting to stick his finger aaaaaaaalll the way up his nose by way of commentary. 

He's gotten to that stage of his illness where he's still sick but really, really bored with sitting around.  Mostly he just wants to listen to "The Pirate King" and "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" over and over again, and he pounds on his tambourine until he exhausts himself and signs "don't like" through the rest of it.  When he's not coughing up a lung, that is.  Or napping.  He's doing a lot of upright napping.  Being sick that long can tire a little body out.

So we're staying home today, except for the trip I had to make up to my favorite coffee shop, since I managed to walk out on my bill there.  Again.  See, I pretty much always pay at the register first, and so if I sit down and eat first my brain apparently short circuits and I forget that I owe them money.  I even joked with the waitress as I was sitting down to remind me to pay so I didn't walk out on them again, and then I totally did it anyway.  I blame extreme sleep deprivation.  Also I think my brain hates me or something.

To make it even worse, I wasn't the one who remembered the next morning that I hadn't paid.  Eden piped up during breakfast and said:

"Mommy, I know something you forget!"

Then she wanted me to guess.  As Connor had stayed up until three in the morning the night before, I was not in a guessing mood.

"Just tell me," I said.

"You forget to pay for food!"  Then she laughed at me and gave me a round of applause.

Clearly I am setting a stellar example for my children here in terms of fiscal responsibility and, you know, not doing stuff that's illegal.  Huzzah.

Luckily the coffee shop folks are very, very nice people and realize that I'm not doing this on purpose and that I will, in fact pay them once I realize I have stiffed them, but I'm sure that this is getting old.  And let me tell you, it was embarrassing enough the first time I did it-- let alone the second or third.  I gave them my phone number this time so they can call me if I do it again though, because this is getting ridiculous.  I am so not ready to start a new career in unintentional petty theft.

This is what parenting has evidently reduced me to-- I used to be able to write complex, nuanced fifteen-page papers on topics like the Order of the Garter's possible connection to "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and now I can't even remember to close out my tab not even half an hour after I've joked with the barista about not closing out said tab.

Sigh.

~Jess