Sick Day on Sunday

Its Sunday morning and normally I would be in church but today, as fortune would have it, my son had a fever (100.8), so he couldn’t go to church, and being only 9 years old, he required someone to stay at home with him.

When my wife presented me with the information about the fever, she asked me if I wanted to stay at home with him. Now, those who know me know that I will almost never pass up an opportunity to skip out on church. Nothing against church, really, its just that I’m 41 years old, and I grew up going to church back when the church had something going on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and I just think I’ve been enough, until they start changing things, you know. My view is that I’ve probably heard most of it already. I’m not saying I don’t ever want to go—just that I don’t need to go every week. But, that’s a whole ‘nother story, as they say. Point being that I’m predisposed to chose the “stay at home with the boy” option.

However, this of course involves risk, because the reason for needing to stay at home is that the boy is presumably sick—thus the fever. Cleaning up after a sick kid is one of those things that I try to avoid even more than I try to get out of going to church. So, I have to think—how sick is the kid, and what are the chances that I’m going to have to clean up something really gross.

Given that not 15 minutes before I received the news of the boy’s fever, I had seen the boy at the height of exhilaration playing a computer game where he got to practice bicycle trick riding, and given that the fever was only 100.8, I liked my odds. So, I agreed to stay home with the sick young’n.

Once the wife and daughter were gone, my challenge was to take maximum advantage of my time away from church, which means that I hoped to avoid aimlessly wandering around YouTube all morning. After all, I have lots of writing, guitar picking, and reading to do. (It probably took Faulkner less time to write “The Hamlet” than its going to take me to finish reading it.

So far so good; we’re over half way home, and the last time I checked on him he was sitting in his bed chuckling at his book of gross jokes. This morning I’ve been practicing the guitar, trying to learn the Bob Dylan’s “Song to Woody”. I’ve been in a major Bob Dylan mood lately anyway; but then I discovered a website which appears to have the lyrics, chords and tabs for literally every song Bob Dylan put on a tape somewhere.

The guitar practice is going pretty good. Who knows, maybe I’ll be coming to a coffee shop near you. (Only if you live really really close to my house.)

As far as my ability to resist the aimless You Tube viewing, I did okay. I did find this YouTube video of a Bob Dylan live performance of the song I’m learning.

And, of course, how was I to resist watching Jimmy Kimmel’s new video “I’m [expletive] Ben Affleck.”

Music I’m Listening to: Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series Vol. 6 Live 1964 (on Rhapsody)
What I’m Reading: William Faulkner, “The Hamlet”