Do you hate working with parents of young children?

I called off again tomorrow. Whatever germs are floating around our house are persistent and Laurel is not quite right and got sent home from daycare today. I feel like crap, but I think it's because things happen like I go the whole day eating just a Luna bar and two cups of coffee because one of my students has decided that it's a good idea to tuck his belt into the back of his pants and wear it like a tail. Which wouldn't be that big of a deal, except he tries to whip people with his tail.

Did you know that dealing with crap like that was part of my job?

I've lost a whole pants size since the first day of school thanks to antics like that.

But I was thinking, as I pondered over possible solutions to this tail whipping thing, that it must suck to be my colleague, and never know when I am going to call off, but definitely know that it will be more than the allotted ten days. That I will sometimes be distracted because I'm thinking about the text I just got from my husband that says Laurel has a fever, and he's going to get her, but he's on the bus and it will be a little while. That I will pick up all kinds of germs myself, and always look a little disheveled and sniffly and tired.

That I will sometimes forget how to perform simple arithmetic while I'm demonstrating a problem on measures of central tendency on the board.

It's the health insurance that makes it worth it...me working, I mean. But sometime I wonder if we would even need the health insurance if Laurel and I didn't spend all day in germ factories, not sleeping enough due to five a.m. alarms, and forgetting to eat lunch because of tail whipping episodes.