You knew it was too good to be true...

The kid had an amazingly good week last week. Nothing got destroyed and no giant trash piles of food wrappers were discovered. He kept his light green (i.e. stayed out of trouble) at school, did his homework, picked up his toys and even told me I looked pretty.

He did so well that he earned a trip to Target to buy a small toy.

Sigh.

Today at work, I got a call from the school office. The kid had been sent to the nurse because he was complaining of a stomach ache.

That's not the problem.

The problem came when he proudly informed the school nurse that "My Mommy has the swine flu."

This apparently caused a panic of major proportions at the school and I'm sure a team of haz-mat-suited CDC employees was poised to hunt me down and quarantine me until the nurse called me and I explained that no, I do not, in fact, have the swine flu. In fact, I am not even sick.

Yes, I know my son's cheeks are reddish - he's having an eczema outbreak there right now. I took his temperature twice over the weekend just to be sure and he was fine. I'm fine. We're all fine, here, now, thank you. How are you?

So, when you see on CNN tonight that there's been a massive swine flu outbreak in So Cal...you know who to blame for it.

That's right - it's my mother's fault.

Because she has been lecturing the kid repeatedly about washing his hands more frequently so he won't get the swine flu.

I signed up for this whole parental thing on purpose. Really, I did. I just never imagined it would lead to mass panic and school closures.

KJ

P.S. If you think this little announcement was bad, wait until I post the story of what he said last night when we met our brand new next door neighbors for the first time ever. Yeah, they'll never speak to me again.