When we got off the plane I found that my vaguely sore throat had become a volcano of burning fire that had crept into my ears.
Kaety wanted to stop in Albany to do a little late Black Friday shopping for the Foster Kids Association. While she did that I opted for a visit to Urgent Care – Noble came with me as my medical advocate.
He wasn’t much use as my advocate – as I got my throat swabbed he covered his eyes. While we waited for the culture to finish baking and heard about all the different types of strep I could possibly have, he recreated all the gagging sounds I had made while getting swabbed.
We were released a few minutes later, strep free, to search for mommy in the Black Friday madness.
Even with the shopping interlude the kids had been cooped up for way too long and had turned to constant and vigorous bickering. I was in the co-pilot seat for the drive home, and in charge of telling everyone to knock it off and delivering ‘looks’. After threat-laden speech two-thousand I turned back around to hear Kaety say, “shit, shit, shit” as she clipped a huge deer with the right side of the van. The deer limped off, and we drove on intact. We spent the next few minutes sticking all our scared parts back into their places and breathing. During the whole life threatening event the kids never missed a beat in their bickering.
We spent the rest of the drive home talking about the logistics of the upcoming road kill take laws. If we’d had a road kill permit, we would have pulled over on the dark and foggy road with screaming kids in the car, found and tagged the animal. Put it out of its misery with our TSA approved set of tweezers, gutted it with the same set of tweezers and then hefted the carcass onto the roof rack of the mini van. The rest of the ride home would have been fun for the kids as they played “what’s that look like” as the blood drained down the side windows of van and made cool patterns.