Sicknote

Pink velvet cupcake.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Any parent will tell you - it is a well-known fact of life that your children are always sick at the most inconvenient time.
Take DD#2 today. Normally while the children are at school I don't venture far from home. To the nearest town five minutes away for grocery shopping or to pick up new school tights or for a stroll round the charity shops, to local friends for coffee and cake. Maybe as far as the two bigger towns 15 minutes away from the village.
On an unusual day you might even find me at home doing housework - but that doesn't happen very often. Why hoover when you can chat and eat cake?
Anyway, today was different. My beloved iPhone had a fit of the sulks earlier this week and wouldn't ring or ping. I tried all sorts of tricks from the internet including a gut-wrenchingly scary factory reset. But it refused to co-operate and I had to resort to keeping a portable speaker on it so I could hear it ring. This somewhat spoiled its clean shiny glassy white lines and made it rather less portable.
My DH offered to swap phones with me "for the usual fee" - which is not currency based - enough said?  But instead I booked an appointment at the Genius bar at an Apple store - 40 minutes drive away.

a serious case of blue tongue-itis affecting
both of my daughters.

Of course, within minutes of arriving and parking my phone vibrated at me - a message from DD's school saying she had earache and was a bit tearful and could I come and get her asap?
Cue huge exasperated sigh and the onset of mammoth mommy guilt as I text back to say no, I couldn't come immediately. I promised them I would be back in about an hour.
So instead of a relaxed mooch round the shops and maybe a spot of light lunch before picking up grumpy toddler from pre-school I ended up sorting my phone and heading straight back to the car park.
At least I hadn't been too inconvenienced. DS#1 came out with chicken pox on his first day of school. DD#1 came out with chicken pox on the first day of my new job! I missed an amazing day of cocktails, dinner and a show in London as the doctors investigated a mystery non-blanching rash on the same daughter. And my children are well known for breaking bones at the most inconvenient times - usually on holiday!
I'm lucky that at the moment I don't work. (I mean in the traditional sense of course - I bloody work hard as it goes and have a variety of job titles from housekeeper to chauffeur but no-one's paying me) I have friends who do have "proper" jobs and I feel for them - how do you prioritise? top client or snotty child? Very important meeting - or vomit?
Anyway, all's well that ends well - DD#2 feels much better after a dose of the pink sticky magic stuff and a rest and my new phone is pinging happily. But I don't like the sound of grumpy's cough......