Hell Week at Chez Larkin

The week of the school musical is always rough. But the crazy week started early. Saturday, Mike was due to make his first trip to the big city of New York. The school Spanish Club hired a charter bus and they were going to the zoo in Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and several other places. Friday night Tom and I went to see Dan's girlfriend perform in Les Miserable at Green Central School. As we walked in the door after the play around 11 pm the phone rang. Mike who was spending the night at a friend's was on the other end. He told me that his lip was swollen and that he was scared. After a few quick questions like are you breathing ok (remember he occasionally gets asthma attacks) I hopped into the car and brought him home. During the 5 minute ride his entire top lip swelled up. But it was just his top lip. There were no other symptoms. He hadn't eaten anything, he hadn't been punched, nothing jumped out. We gave him Benadryl and there was no response, which was odd. But it wasn't getting any worse so I slept on the couch so that I could hear him and checked on him with a flashlight every hour. He looked like Donald Duck. Unfortunately the next morning there was no change so I kept him home from the trip and called the doc. Fortunately our doc will come in for patients on Saturdays and of course by the time we got to her office, the swelling had abated significantly. She gave us some prednisone in case there was another incident and off we went.

This week play practices (Pirates of Penzance) run very late, the dress rehearsal is Thursday and the play is Friday and Saturday night. Mike goes from school to baseball practice to stage crew duty and then to bed. When does he eat and do homework you ask? Why in between slow periods during rehearsal of course. And I run down to the school with food around 6pm. Dan doesn't have baseball but he doesn't have the study halls that Mike has so it's very hectic for him too and he has the biggest role he has ever had. Even though he had the lead in Cats last year, this lead is even bigger. The kids (and parents) are pretty wiped out by the time Sunday comes along, believe me. My MIL arrives from Kansas on Thursday and Tom picks her up while I am filming the dress rehearsal. The sheep shearer comes Saturday at 8am. I will be inundated with fleeces. Hell week.