Well, at least it's not Strep?

So, Secondborn had a bit of a meltdown at school on Monday. It's his second major meltdown, and this is only the third week of school — so it was almost a relief to discover on Monday night that the child had a raging case of Pink Eye. Not too much of a relief, though: it meant keeping him home from school Tuesday, arranging a doctor's visit, picking up his eyedrops from the pharmacy, and then getting him to hold still so I could drip the drops into his eyeballs. He's actually been quite heroic about that last part.

It also meant waking up this morning to find that my left eye was both weirdly itchy and weirdly mucus-y. I have no idea if this is purely psychosomatic or whether he actually managed to pass The Pale Eye Of Doom on to me, but I took the day off work just in case and I've been using his eyedrops on my eye as well. This last part actually makes him feel better about having to get eye-dropped himself; they say misery loves company, and in the case of my wife and younger child it's certainly true. Firstborn and I, on the other hand, want nothing more than to be left completely alone when we're feeling miserable.

Since I was home, I devoted the afternoon to getting all the clean laundry sorted and put away, the rest of the laundry run, and the dirty dishes cleaned and put away. My plan was that once that was done, I could devote the evening to writing. Unfortunately, that afternoon of work — including a break to pick up Secondborn early from his after-school care — seems to have used up the last of my energy. I'm taking this as additional evidence that I am, in fact, not well. (Though honestly, having my child go into Full Metal Meltdown at school twice in two weeks provided enough stress that any amount of emotional exhaustion seems understandable.)

So I haven't done the Blogging Challenge for this week, and probably won't; I haven't done any writing on my own projects (ditto); and in fact the current plan is just to get the boys through their various evening activities (medicinal hot chocolate and a stretch of sitting on the toilet for Secondborn, Bass practice and science and art homework for Firstborn). After that, I can go to bed — which sounds like the best idea imaginable.

Ye gods the beginning of school has been a beating.