The first mentions of the other “F” word

Cold today and flurries were mentioned in the forecast. I broke my own vow to never listen to Hallie Cotnam’s voice again as I had to drive Mrs. Ottawacker into the office at 7:15 – she is in for a day of make-work training for a make-work database that nobody wants or needs. The radio came on for the news, and I was too busy being told what I needed to do for the day to turn it off again afterwards. Mrs. Ottawacker can keep her audience rapt.
 
When I came back, Ottawacker Jr. had pulled an exquisite double bluff by getting himself up and ready for school. He’d got most of his lunch ready, and had a tortilla wrap out to defrost. I wasn’t sure whether to tell him he was not well enough to go in yet or see how far he would take it. Maybe it was part of the illness: the delusions were kicking in, perhaps with hallucinations too. Eventually, I told him we had a doctor’s appointment and until she had cleared it, he was going nowhere. He took it with the expected good grace.
 
Spent the morning ensconced in various projects, none of which will make me any richer but all of which needed doing. Then we drove to Ottawacker Jr.’s doctor, where we waited 45 minutes in a cramped room for his paediatrician to come and see us. Normally, there is a procession of trainees, interns, nurses to prepare us for the grandiloquent entrance of the Queen of Vanier, but this time she came in alone, looking tired and harried. She gave him the once over, pronounced him “sick” with a virus, told him to go back on his asthma inhalers, and warned us of the sheer number of viruses doing the rounds this year. Then we were out on our ears.
 
Stopped off at Adam’s Sausages for a Polish-style sausage in a bun on the way back. This used to be Ottawacker Jr.’s earliest stomping grounds, as it is near the train tracks and I&G used to bring him out here for morning or afternoon excitement when they were looking after him. Now, of course, his childhood amnesia has set in, and the memories are distant. But they did their job, of course, as his face lit up at the train tracks and the thought that he’d get to see trains. Sadly, his father is not as obliging as his godparents.
 
But we had a quick lunch and then I brought him home. Dinner was a quick rehash of yesterday’s Thanksgiving lunch. Except for the roasties, which had all mysteriously disappeared. I was about to launch into an Ottawacker-Jr.-directed epic rant about the sanctity of left-over roast potatoes when I saw the look of guilt on Mrs. Ottawacker’s face and decided discretion is the better part of valour.