102.8

Oh, dear, Juma's got a fever. He came down with it Sunday afternoon ("I have a fever: one-oh-two-six"). So we kept him home from school Monday. Justin and I had to negotiate who would stay home with him and who would skip class (me).

(J: I can't skip class; I'm the TA!
S: I've got three midterms this week!
J: I've got 40 papers to grade by Wednesday!
S: I've got 6 classes and two jobs!)*

It lasted until Monday night/this morning ("My fever is gone! Ninety-eight-point-oh!"). He still had to skip school, but he felt so good today that we went out to the library and ran some errands. (We waited in the post office line for 20 minutes to buy 30 cents worth of 2-cent stamps. I somehow completely missed the rise in stamp prices. I sent my phone bill out 10 days ago, and only just got it back today--the day it's due--saying it needed two more cents to be sent. Didn't it cost them more than two cents to send it back to me?)

The fever returned, though, this afternoon, up to 102.8. Which means we'll have to keep him home tomorrow. And there's no way I can miss class, because there's a midterm. And there's no way Justin can miss class, because he's got to teach a section based off of it. And our usual babysitter--whose son gave Juma the fever--has a meeting. And we can't send him to a backup babysitter because Juma will infect their kids.

Which leaves one option: bring Juma to class with one of us, boot up a DVD on the laptop, strap on the headphones, and hope he'll last an hour with no attention from an actual human.

Why couldn't he have been sick last week, when his school was cancelled anyway? Or next week, when our school is cancelled anyway? Ah, two-student-parent families. The few; the proud; the insane.

*This conversation never happened.