Fifth Disease and the not so littlest pet shop

I think I know what caused the rash! It seems to be the same thing that caused Ron’s body aches last week. Someone here at work thought my rash looks like Fifth Disease, which is uncommon in adults, but not unheard of. My symptoms seem to be classic of this disease – feeling ill with headache slight fever then a few days later breaking out into a (usually non-itchy) rash on face, extremities and torso. Joint pain is also associated with the disease in adults, so I think that I probably caught it from Ron who got the joint pain part, and if he had the rash at all, it probably just looked like sunburn, especially since he’s outside a lot during the day. We’ll have to wait and see now if any of the kids get it – there’s no treatment or way to prevent it since it’s just a virus like a cold. I’d never heard of it before. Apparently the rash can last up to a month, so I guess I’d better get used to being pink. At least it just looks like a mild sunburn, which is easily explained this time of year. Having a rash like this in January might cause a lot more comment.

The kids made a ‘pet store’ with all of their (many, many) stuffed animals last night in the living room. There was an area for stuffed dogs, stuffed cats, horses, monkeys, giraffes, fish, you get the idea. I was allowed to purchase a multicolored Care Bear for $10 of imaginary money and a stuffed unicorn for 2 imaginary dollars. I was originally told I could only purchase one animal at a time, but successfully pleaded my case that my stuffed animal ‘pet’ would need a friend so that it wouldn’t be too lonely. However, when a stuffed ‘Lumpy’ elephant wanted to join my menagerie, I was strictly told that I would have to return one of my previous purchases. Decisions, decisions! The ‘pet store’ was ultimately disrupted when someone let a 16-month-old toddler loose in the living room store and she decided that she wanted to play with and ‘adopt’ all of the pets that she could get her little hands on. This caused a serious rift between the business owners (my 6 and 4-year-olds) and said toddler, amid screams of “Becca’s ruining our store”, and “Hey, she didn’t pay for that!”. So the pet store had to close up shop and all stuffed pets were returned to whence they came, namely the older girls’ room. So ends their first foray into free enterprise. And I realized that my children have way, way too many stuffed animals.