{sqt} – in which everyone gets sick

As usual I’m joining the seven quick takes link up at This Ain’t The Lyceum today – head over and read some of the other blogs!

1. I missed out on the book theme last week, but I did have a very exciting book moment this week: my mom (who is a professor at the local community college) came home with a big cardboard box full of books that another professor was giving away, and told me to take anything that looked interesting. They seemed brand new and were non-fiction spanning the spectrum from memoir to science to investigative journalism. In other words, they were a treasure trove and I selected quite a few of them… I’ve started hinting to my husband that we need to put shelves up high on the walls because we have no more floor space for another bookshelf!
2. The only one of these books that I’ve had a chance to finish so far is Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America, by Mary Otto.The book is primarily about public health policy, and explains quite a bit about both the history of dentistry and the current state of dental health access and expense. But it covers this potentially dry topic in a manner that is both rationally and emotionally powerful, drawing the reader in through stories of individuals affected by societal pressure for “perfect” teeth or by societal neglect of oral health. Before reading this, I had never realized the extent of either the available cosmetic dentistry services or the overall risks of poor dental health (I guess I live in a comfortable middle-class bubble here…), and I was surprised and saddened by much of what I learned. This book does not engage in a lot of philosophizing; it accumulates stories and statistics and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions.
3. Another thing I have discovered this week is that drawing my own conclusions about medical issues is probably not a great idea, as they are likely to be wrong. Most of us have been sick this week, and Aubade had a cough and seemed miserable, so I called in to the doctor to ask for a refill on her Albuterol. The doctor asked us to come in (that is, the triage nurse called us at 3:25 and said that they wouldn’t refill the medicine without an appointment and that she had an opening at 4:00; we live 20 minutes away and the kids were in various states of undress and hadn’t had an afternoon snack yet), so we drove down there (and miraculously made it with three minutes to spare!) only to discover that Aubade wasn’t actually wheezing and thus didn’t need the Albuterol, but did have pinkeye and a double ear infections. Oh, and also that Limerick was extremely wheezy and did need the Albuterol, and had a higher fever than Aubade despite not feeling warm to my touch at all. So now they’re both drugged up, I’m nursing a sore eye, sore ears, and a headache, and Rondel is getting cabin fever from being cooped up all day with sick family.
4. To occupy our time while quarantined in the house, we’ve been playing a lot of homemade board games, both on the number boards and with a rainbow-colored board game path we designed together (Rondel came up with a set of rules that are consistent, creative, and fair – I was really impressed). There are giant foam dice everywhere (we only have two, but they are always getting thrown around and lost and re-found), and the little animal toys we’ve been using as game pieces keep disappearing and reappearing and getting dumped out in the hallways, and the Duplos have literally made their way into every single room of the house such that walking around is an obstacle course (mostly afflicting poor Aubade who keeps tripping on them). Cleaning not only seems futile but requires a lot more energy than I have available being sick myself…
5. We’ve also started coloring, drawing, and writing more again, since we’re stuck sitting around! Rondel even told me he wanted to learn how to write his letters, and persisted at it diligently until we left for swim lesson. He still switches hands when he writes, and he seems to see the parts of the letters instead of how those parts fit together to make a whole (his first “A” looked like a UFO before I verbalized for him a different way of perceiving and drawing it), but he did surprisingly well! Limerick is able to copy the letters well but doesn’t really pay any attention to direction and more often than not draws them sideways or upside down or reversed, without realizing it.
6. Another thing that went surprisingly well was hiding tofu inside the popsicles I make for the kids, to increase the protein content (since they like to eat them as meals). It ended up just contributing a slight nutty flavor, which went really well with the peach-vanilla blend I was using. I loved it as a smoothie and the kids ate up all the popsicles!
7. Also from the popsicles I’ve learned that frozen pineapple whips up in a food processor like egg whites or cream. If you process it with a little bit of milk it gives you something almost identical to whipped cream, just a bit more airy, that literally melts in your mouth. It is so good – I just want to eat it all plain every time I make it as a popsicle base. And I imagine if you used a non-dairy milk it could be a pretty decent whipped cream substitute!

I hope you all stay healthy and have a great week 🙂