Ebola

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You know how sometimes you’ll visit a pregnant blogger’s site and she has one of those countdown widgets in the sidebar, like how many months/weeks/days/hours until the baby arrives?

I love that shit.

Because it gives you something to look forward to and it must be very rewarding to know that in X months/days/hours, you’ll have the baby in your arms. Assuming you’re into babies, obviously.

So since my kids have been out of school for two and a half days now, I decided to check on my daughter’s new high school’s website to see if they have one of those countdown widgets in the sidebar until school starts. Because after the birth of your precious baby nothing is more exciting than when they get to go the hell back to school.  I was hoping to find out that we were a mere 300 hours or something away from that beautiful day, but instead I found some nonsense about Summer Reading.

So I don’t even understand this because how am I supposed to know that shit is posted there? If it weren’t for my looking for the countdown widget, I’d have no idea.  I think the principal should make a home visit to every student’s home to explain how the website works. And maybe mention how many minutes until school starts while he’s at it.

But whatever. I reviewed the list– they are all science books and there’s a star next to one of them (not a six point yellow star, indicating mandatory summer reading for Jewish students, although the way things are going I wouldn’t have been surprised). So the starred book, The Hot Zone,  has a  Content Warning! next to it and then some drivel about how due to the mature theme, language and situations, parents are strongly encouraged to preview the book.

This is pretty much the last thing that I need right now, but I comfort myself with the fact that there are six other books to choose from, with enticing titles like The Beak of the Finch and Napoleon’s Buttons and The Future of Life that appear not to require any parental involvement whatsoever and therefore should be on every short list for the Pulitzer.

But of course, OF COURSE, my daughter chooses The Hot Zone because “I’m really into Ebola now!”

I don’t even want to know what that means.

And now she’s reading it and says that it’s really good and when I asked her what some of the symptoms of Ebola are because I’ve been feeling a bit ebolaish lately, she looks me straight in the eye and says “literally everything, mom.”

Fantastic.

But I got the book yesterday and am reading along.  Which is a huge sacrifice on my part because due to my extreme hypochondria I can’t even watch medical dramas on TV.  It’s a good thing that my 13 year old daughter is reading ahead of me to answer any concerns I may have about the mature theme, language and situations.

One year ago ...

• Gulp - 2013