Zoe turned up with a sore throat and fever last night, so we kept her home from school today and she got to do her favorite thing: lay up in my bed and watch TV. (She also got to sleep in my bed with Beth last night, too, while I slept in her kid-sized daybed. That was, uh, “fun”.)

So with her laid up in the bedroom and me in my office on the other end of the house and her with a sore throat, long-distance communication was an issue. Zoe asked if we had a bell she could ring when she needed me (because it’s a TV cliche and yes she watches far too much TV and of course I let her spend her sick day watching TV) but we don’t have one, so I offered her the 21st Century version of the Sick Bell: my cell phone. I had her call the house line if she needed me and I answered in my office and that way we could talk without taxing her voice.

And oh-my-God did she work the hell out of that phone. No lie, it was ringing every five to ten minutes:

• Daddy, can you take my temperature?
• Daddy, can you make me a cup of tea?
• Daddy, can you make me some tomato soup and tuna fish?
• Daddy, can you put more mayo in the tuna?
• Daddy, can you take my temperature again?
• And etc…

Now, the phone ringing annoys me on the best of days, and today she was ringing it off the hook. But because it was Zoe I couldn’t ignore it and let it go to voicemail. So not only was it annoying me by ringing, it was also annoying me by requiring me to answer it. And not only was it annoying me by requiring me to answer it, it was also annoying me by being for me. And not only was it annoying me by being for me, it was also annoying me by being a call that required me to get up and do something. I’m not the most patient of people to start with, and all this ringing and being interrupted and running to do whatever didn’t do much for my sunny disposition. So I don’t think staying home sick was quite as much fun for Zoe as she might have imagined.

She seemed to be staging a comeback by the afternoon (which time has proven to be just the Motrin kicking in), so I got her dressed and out of bed and took her to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Because I’m all about being a responsible parent. But, hey, that was two hours when we were entertained together and the phone wasn’t ringing. This part of the day probably was as fun as Zoe had imagined — she thought it was cool going to a movie midweek because “It’s not crowded because the only people here are retired people and people who don’t have jobs.”

And now we’re home again, and more importantly now Beth is home again, and I’ve tagged up and turned over responsibility of sick kid requests to her.

And I took my cell phone back.