Kids Aren't Entirely Impossible

When your kid has been sick with the same cold for three weeks and you call the doctor and ask for prednisone because it’s the only thing that makes it so she doesn’t have to go to the hospital and they give you the prescription with the caveat that if she wheezes once you have to bring her in to his office which you know means they’ll send you to the hospital which is the place where nurses come in every 45 minutes to wake you and the child up so no one sleeps and no one gets better and yet they do little except monitor her where her o-sats never go lower than 95% and you take this as some kind of indication that her wheezing does not automatically indicate not breathing and so with the next cold you wait it out and there is no wheezing (yet) and there is no hospital (please no) and you make Pho Bo for dinner and the butcher at Meijer cut your top round (supposed to be sirloin) thick (you asked for carpaccio-thin) and you go home and put the too-thick meat in a star-anised beef broth ($3.89 an organic box broth\) and you drive home hoping there’s no wheezing (none) and the broth is good but the meat (top round, thick) is tough but your daughter-with-nose-running is drinking the broth and eating the rice noodles and chewing on a basil leaf, asking for another bean sprout makes me think that you maybe have a new date (since your husband is not a Pho zealot) for the Vietnamese restaurant a mere 12 miles away and she wants some of your broth with the four jalapeño slices and you give her a sip and she says water water water and then asks for more soupand you are relieved when she runs and jumps and says bean sprout over and over indicating not wheeze just breath, you relax for the first time in 28 days and chew on the jalapeños in your soup and let your own nose run and run.