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You know how everything hits at once? It's one of those weeks...

My agency's annual audit started on Monday. The auditors are supposed to be at our offices only for this week, but you can never be sure about that. They're a new-to-us firm this year, so that means more learning time, and they're auditing 2007 - the year of Chaos, Conversion, and Churning of Staff . We're not as ready as we should be, so I'm expecting even more stress than usual. 

My husband will be out of the office and out of town all next week (that's going to be a separate note), so he'd like to get a lot done this week...and of course, his computer went haywire on Monday. He spent a twelve-hour day troubleshooting and completely re-installing everything on his hard drive, so of course he got no actual work done.  

 I'm not sure if it's his allergies acting up or what, but my stepson's not been feeling well for a few days. He's got sinus drainage or something which is making him cough a lot; and the combination of mucus and coughing is irritating both his throat and his stomach. No fever, but he's just not up to par.

His mother called my husband to let him know what was going on with The Boy on Monday, just to give him a heads-up that he might need to stay home from school on Tuesday. She was scheduled for day surgery on her hand, so could Dad take the day off if necessary? At the time she spoke with him, it didn't look like it would be a good idea for him to miss work...

...but there are three parents in this picture, and one of them has just a little more flexibility right now, even with an audit going on. My boss is handling the direct dealings with the auditors this time around, and I let him know before I left on Monday that I just might have to be on-call from home on Tuesday. 

And so it went. The Boy was actually a pretty good patient for most of the day, but I haven't seen any marked change in his condition. Whether he goes to school on Wednesday is up in the air right now, but I really do need to get back to the office (I actually did get a few calls from my boss), so I'll have to hand off to one of the other parental units. 

It occurs to me that the way things worked out on Tuesday is one of the unexpected benefits of this 21st-century-family thing, when there's shared custody and all of the parents can actually act like grownups most of the time.