( Background :  The other day, I was up here, trying to do something, and The Girl was screaming and yelling : she had a virus on her laptop. I cannot run downstairs, but I did my very best . When I got to the kitchen I said, do not touch that dial. Do not panic. Sit back and breathe. Do not ever push these buttons that promise to make this go away. And I knew that she had been hi-jacked. I have solved this twice before, but, I am sick and I do not know her computer at all. Laptop. I ask her, where is your virus security, where is Avast ?  Bambi is blinking those eyelashes at me. I go through C, program files, and she does not have Avast. I have had my own rules in this house for many years : if anyone wants me to even attempt to fix their computer or laptop, they have to use Avast, they have to use Firefox, Google is their homepage and SpyBot has to be on their computer. These are tools that I can work with. And they are all free. Do not pay for these things. She has been using IE. Fine, it is all fixed now, but the point of this intro is computers and panic )

Cast :

The Mother, wasting away ( you know this story-)

The Baby

Scene :

The Baby and The Mother are sitting across the table from each other, in the kitchen.It is lunch time. Apple turnover day.  The Baby is on The Mother’s laptop ( which The Mother never uses). The Mother is probably trying to do a Sudoku.

The Mother looks up- The Baby is crying, silently. As she sits behind that laptop.

The Mother : What is wrong ?

The Baby : Nothing. Leave it.

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This takes an enormous amount of time. Baby has an Internet boyfriend. Theodore. I know this. I have seen his photo. He is welcome to come here,  with his parents, we can go to a Mickey D’s, with all of the parents, and they can meet each other, in real life. The parents will all sit far, far away. I cannot go against this. For my children have all met internet friends of mine. This is not a cast of thousands, but you can meet fine people via the internet. But she is 11, we have to have rules. He looks legit. Not like some lech from Belgium.

But she is getting caught in Girl Games. In her little group. They all want him. I have no idea why, but I am not 11, am I? For the last week, Baby has been telling me that Lucy is after Theodore. And so, I am sitting across from the kitchen table, hacking and blowing my nose, and trying to figure out what is going on with her.

And I tell her just what I told The Girl : do not panic.  Do not do anything when you are upset. Sit back, wait a few hours. She is getting this she said, she said business, from a group of cats.

I told her to splash cold water on her face and not to touch that keyboard until she was calm.

This worked.

I really want to enjoy being officially sick-sick. That sounds very bizarre, but I never get really sick. I can always dump the dishwasher and do the laundry. I count, you know. This works.

In the last about 15 years, including this illness, I have been sick-sick 3 times.  The first was when we all had strep throat. The Baby was not around, so I must have tossed the penicillin about and said, drink this, in a very stern manner, and crawled back into bed.

I believe that a pile of blankets, a lot of sleep and sweating ( no, ladies glow) will cure most illnesses.

And then I got ( no, I contracted, or something like that )  Puerperal Fever after The Baby was born. 11 years ago. This is Childbirth Fever. Really. And she was born in a hospital, I was 42, after all. And she was my third child. You have a fever like that and you can never answer another question about * how was your temp* again. Nothing compares to that. Not even close.

Your body temperature goes mad. One minute, you are sweating buckets ( always good in my book if you are ill) and then, you are are freezing cold. Not just chilly, your teeth are chattering, and nothing will warm you up.

We all take penicillin for granted, but it was a deep and dark world before it was discovered that a blue mould could destroy so many harbingers of death.

Scene 1

Cast

The Mother, who is wasting away from some gentile Victorian * women’s* illness.

The Girl, a smoldering bowl of passions. She wants to be an actress. This will work.

The scene opens in the evening. The Girl and The Mother are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, a virus laden laptop in front of them.

The Mother : We could call Kevin.  He could probably fix it.

The Girl raises her eyebrows, for The Mother has told her time and again to stay away from Kevin. Kevin and Penny just broke up.  Kevin is a very nice and very naive young man and Penny is absolutely nuts. When they were at Casa Kitchen for 2 weeks, The Mother was up there many evenings pulling a very violent Penny off of Kevin ( where was The Father ? Why was this The Mother’s  job ?). The Mother is afraid of Penny. The Girl has some how gained access to Kevin’s  microsoft chat thing. MS whatever. The Mother and The Girl and Penny all know that Kevin has the major hots for The Girl. And The Mother has been saying stay out of this, he wants her back, and you are being used as a tool. And Penny is f*cking crazy. And then, The Mother said, we could call Kevin. He could probably fix it.

The Mother and The Girl stare at each other, across the kitchen table.

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Kevin showed up this morning at 9, not 9.30. AM. The Girl was still running around in her socks and I was still trying to clear up the kitchen ( the daily Hiroshima- I have said this to my bright and perky counselor, I hate facing our kitchen in the morning) and I am at slow motion right now, I still get winded going to that part of the kitchen. I am shuffled off to the front room, my newspapers and spa in hand. Oh, and my roll of paper towels : I am really hacking away here. You try coughing up an oyster. I nearly barfed today from the effort. The Girl does not want me to hack in front of Kevin. I have no problems with this.

Back peddling a little, 8.30 .I am hacking away in the kitchen, reading my paper, trying to do a Sudoku, and The Girl Tells me that not only is Kevin coming to help with the computer, but at 2am last night, Julie called her and canceled their trip today to The Big City.  I put my pen down, looked at her and said, go by yourself then.

The Girl looked at me.

And I said, yes, he will most likely go with you. But be very very careful ( here I must add that The Girl could sling Kevin onto the ground in two seconds flat).

I finally cuddled up in a quilt in the front room, and watched a BBC show called Heir Hunters.  This was a good one. It had to do with some legacy left by  a certain gentleman named West, High Class, British. And sure as shit, this is the same West family that Jennie Jerome married into. Quite a scandal, for the mother of Winston Churchill to have married a young man about the same age as her son.

I am digressing. Nothing new.

Eventually, The Girl and Kevin left to go to the Big City. He said that he could not fix her computer, but after they left, I checked it, he did fix it.

After they came came home and he was gone, I asked, did he always have that piercing ?  I am old, yes, he always did.

And then I said, we are going to have an English lesson. One word. Do you know what *repercussions* means ?

Nope.