Well, okay, you might. Has YOUR child had the chicken pox?

The WHAT pox?

Yes, ha ha. The Chicken Writer has come beak to beak with the one kind of chicken thing she doesn't really want to, um, embrace. Chicken Pox. As in red spots, endless scratching, and days and days holed up at home in chicken quarantine land (hmm... new book idea? Chicken Quarantine Is Really... Oh, who am I kidding!?).

The good news (for all of the 93 or so kiddos who came to Politics and Prose this morning to see me read - and hear me sing - Ninety-Three In My Family) is that we noticed the fever at 4 a.m. and the spots at 8, and we were prudent enough (for once) to keep Franny home. Even though it meant missing her class' field trip to see Mommy in action. Truth be told, had it not been for the spots-and-fever combo, I would have thought she was faking to avoid the embarrassment of Mommy's silly hats and book-related antics (she practically begged me not to do a fake sneeze, as I often do, at a key point in the narrative). But, as it happened, there was indeed a pox on her. And maybe on her little sister... tune in soon!

The bad news is, this past week she was a regular Typhoid Mary, doing all her usual active activities (gymnastics, ballet, three parties, chorus, afterschool and, of course, school). And the other bad news is that pretty much all of our standard destinations (park, library, zoo) are not options, so I may just have to break down and install those wall-climber hand holds on the living room walls.