In which Cherry leaves a "gift" for the people on the Metro

Sapphire and Ezio were sick with what may have been the flu this week (I think it probably was. Blaise claims that I'm just buying into the hype. I haven't asked what his alternative diagnoses are. Also, he was gone for the worst of it, so I'm not sure he can talk.), so they stayed home from school Thursday and Friday. By this morning, however, Sapphire was completely fever free, and Ezio was feeling much better, though he was still running a bit of a fever.

We were in desperate need of a trip to the library, and since Ezio was still a bit ill, I decided that I would take Sapphire, who needed to get out of the house, and Cherry, who would keep Blaise from getting any work done otherwise, with me. The trip into the city was fairly uneventful. We had to stand on the RER going in, because we ended up smack in the middle of the train, due to our arrival on the platform just as the train was pulling in to the station. (Normally we go to one end or the other, but that would have meant waiting for the next train, which is a sizable wait on weekends.) We transfered to the Metro, got off at our regular stop and walked to the library.

We dropped off our books, and went back to the children's room to get new ones. (One of these days I'm going to keep my vow to check out a few grown up books too. I've got to get over thinking about how far I've got to carry them.) Ezio wanted Asterix comics (in English), so we picked up a couple of those, as well as a couple of Geronimo Stilton books for him. Cherry once again selected 5 Christmas books, though I was able to dissuade her from picking two different versions of The Night Before Christmas. Sapphire got the next two books in the Anne of Green Gables series, and then explained to the librarian that the reason she likes them so much is that she's basically just like Anne. She has an amazing imagination, and she never stops talking, all of which is of course true. I'm not sure how she'd do with 3 sets of twins though.

I signed the kids up for the Halloween party next Saturday afternoon while the librarian checked out our books, loaded them into the backpack, and headed out. Cherry made it about halfway back to the Metro station (it's about a half mile all told) before she started whining that she couldn't walk any more. I really didn't want to, since my back hurt and I was carrying books, but I picked her up, and noticed that she felt a bit warm. Surely it was my imagination, and even if it wasn't, we had to get home, so down into the Metro we went.

The first ride went without incident. We discovered on arriving at the Gare St. Lazare that we'd just missed a train running in our direction, and that we would need to wait about 15 minutes for the next one. Fortunately, it's the end of the line, and so the trains get there and just sit for 10+ minutes, which meant that we could go and grab seats instead of standing on the platform and waiting for the train to arrive. By this point, I was forced to admit that Cherry was probably actually sick, so I started trying to figure out what hurt. Her ear, evidently, and her butt. What about her stomach? Her denial of stomach pain was interrupted by its contents flying out of her mouth. We cleaned up as best we could, wrapped things well, and stuffed them into the backpack (separately from the books of course). Cherry slept the rest of the way home. Fortunately the train wasn't particularly crowded, and so there wasn't any issue with her keeping her seat. I pity the poor soul who sits in it accidentally however. There's only so much you can do with a couple of windbreakers.