Dear All Y'All...

This is a letter to you, my dear readers. Though you are few and far between and quickly getting fed up with my lack of posting, I think it is important for you to know that this week has been less than ideal in the area of my children.

And by less than ideal, you should understand that to mean "if you throw a germ at my kid it will stick". And if one more germ sticks to him my head will explode. It will explode and become a planet. A planet that will have to be recognized in science books from here forward.

And you can say that you were alive when Obama was elected AND when 'Planet Betsey Went Boom' was discovered. You can tell your children that you remember where you were when you found out. And I'm going to go ahead and elaborate so that you snobs, who like to seem intellectual at cocktail parties, can do just that or when you watch the Discovery Channel you will know what Peter Weller or Leonard Nimoy are going to say before they can tell you in dramatic voices with awesome computerized, high-definition effects about how this planet came to be. And it's a real planet. Not some stupid dwarf-planet or some shit like Pluto is.

It all started last Wednesday at Crazyman's Halloween party. My kid, who is allergic to anything with mold, pollen and moldy pollen decided that rolling around in leaves in a lion suit was what all the cool kids were doing. Evidently, all the cool kids were also getting spider bites and giving their mother's nervous breakdowns. He's set to be Toddler Prom King and Junior Mint Class President at this point.

So for the next 48-hours I was watching that bite to see if it would be eating his flesh and becoming a cavernous hole. Two days later on Friday, his sitter called to say he's running a fever of 102. Which would have worried me more, but the bite was healing and not turning into a crater.

Saturday and Sunday were spent holding him and cuddling his feverish body while cleaning snot and eye boogers off his face. Our lame, married people date night that was going to include underwear shopping and dinner reservations had to be canceled. By Sunday afternoon he was fever free so I was pretty sure that only our weekend would be shit-canned and not the impending work week. Awesome, right?

Monday morning, still fever free we went to the sitter's. My gut told me we were jumping the gun but I was just so freaking gung ho about Monday morning and a fine day of work ahead of me, I just couldn't help it. By 1:00 I got a phone call that a rash was developing. This didn't strike me as too odd, he gets heat rash when he sleeps and some other rash when we just walk past him with a new laundry detergent. The last time he had a rash, I argued with the doctor on call that he needed something while he rolled his eyes at my husband and treated me like a panicky ass-wipe mother. So we agreed he should stay since it was nap time and Jason would pick him up after nap.

What Jason picked up was not our kid. No, because THIS kid had polka-dots from head to foot. He had spots on his cheeks, both sets. He had spots on his stomach and his arm pits. He had spots on his feet and the inside of his mouth.

No, this kid was not mine, this kid was the CDC's worst nightmare. This kid would not be allowed into any foreign country and obviously, they were going to have to create some new vaccination to name after this kid.

This kid was going to keep me from getting out and voting first thing in the AM and this kid was going to keep me home from work and this kid was going to make me go to the doctor's office, with all the other CDC nightmares whether I liked it or not.

As it turned out, when I got him to the doctor and he'd been swabbed, poked, prodded and inspected, they confirmed he was my kid. Which was not entirely a relief until I found out that he was not a toddling infectious disease, he was simply a kid with a double-ear infection and a virus. And like his mother, when he gets sick it shows up all over his skin.

Sorry kid.

As it ends up, I made it to the polls that night, taking my other, disease-free kid with me. Because while it was too late to save the other one from being a disease-ridden burden on society, I could still teach this one about her "civic duty". So she and I headed off to vote after having a discussion with my Communist mother. Who is not a Communist at all, but since she's never been registered to vote in her entire adult life, my Veteran father declared her to be so. Which I chided her that she really should get out to vote since an obvious Socialist Terrorist was in the running and since she is a Fascist and Marxist and all those other things that obviously should be synonymous and red-neck fear inducing, it was the thing to do. Because you know, wasted, un-educated votes are what make this country go round. Well you know what I mean.

I should tell you that I'm happy to be alive today, untouched by any flesh-eating disease my kid brought home and the resident of a country that woke up and smelled the Bush for what it was. And for the poor guy whose house I drive by every day and had the word "nigger" spray-painted on his Obama sign - I rear-ended a McCain/Palin supporter and spray painted "dumb shit" on his forehead.

I didn't really do that, but I did pull him out of car and rubbed my rashy kid all over his face and said, "Luckily for you, you'll be able to afford health care in the next 4-years."

Man, the inside of my head is a cool place.

With lot's of love,
Betsey