Mike's Journal

Up around 6, and most of the family was up early too for some reason or other. We had cupcakes for breakfast in honor of Lindsey’s first birthday. We also had a school holiday, which was much appreciated by the older children.
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My body got me out of bed at 6:30 this morning – a sign of normalcy, although I’m still snuffly and sniffling. Lindsey got up and joined me around 7AM, though all of the other kids slept in, which is quite amazing. Still a bit of sickness going around, obviously….

Pretty much everyone is still sick, though the kids are clearly on the mend and I’m over the worst of this crud. Dana is down with a sore throat now but she still went out shopping for a few hours today, leaving me home to manage the sick ward.
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Thomas decided it was time to get up around 7:30, which is relatively late around here. He came bounding up the stairs and woke Lindsey and I up. Fortunately I was feeling a bit better and after arranging breakfasts was able to get back to some sort of work, catching up on e-mail and putting in a reasonably solid billable day.
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I would have slept in, but Thomas woke up screaming from a nightmare around 6:30. By the time I got him calmed down and breakfasted, I was more or less fully awake. Still achy and spacy, and I took another day off.
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I don’t take sick days. I took one today. Whatever the kids have, I’ve got it too – general malaise, sore throat, low-grade fever. It’s not serious enough to be actual flu, but I had trouble concentrating and didn’t try to do any actual work today.
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Thomas woke up around 3AM absolutely screaming and wanting a sippy cup. Perhaps he was having a nightmare about sippy cups. I got him a drink and changed his diaper and snuggled him back to sleep. He was very snuggly and very sniffly, which probably contributed to my own increasing feeling of malaise over the course of the day. I got up just before 6 and started my own day.
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I was up shortly after 6, which was good because I got a call about 7AM from an advertiser in Germany. Some folks are sort of fuzzy on how time zones work. That segued fairly quickly into various early chats with other people around the company, several of whom are east of me on the map.
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Even though it was after 1AM when I got to bed, I was back up at 6:30 anyhow. My morning schedule is pretty well fixed no matter how late the evenings run. Fortunately there wasn’t anything unusual up today, just the usual run of e-mail and Web sites to deal with.
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Thomas woke up at 3AM today. I think it was a combination of full bladder and bad dreams. After I managed to get him to use the potty (well, some of it went in the potty), I got him re-dressed and snuggled down next to him in his bed to get him back to sleep. That worked until about 5AM, when he rolled over and kicked me in the back when I was in the middle of an exceptionally vivid dream myself. He went back to sleep, but I was pretty well awake so I got up and had a bath to finish waking up.
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