Just when you really need a TV in your life, it has to up and die.

I took Jakob to the doctor today and as she hovered over him, writing a prescription, taking swabs, feeling his glands, telling me this little guy needs a lot of TLC over the next couple of days because he has a bad case of STREP...I could only feel really bad that I have been telling him (and I would not describe the tone as maternal) to BE QUIET for the past 24 hours. And I was being the nice parent.

Unfortunately for me I really need sleep. For example, if I'm forced to go since, say, Thursday night without a good night sleep, by today I'm a broken mess capable only of eating Girl Guide cookies, hoping for a sugar rush, washed down with coffee.

And Jakob is not easy when he's feeling unwell. We went to Shoppers to fill his prescription and he started bellowing like a moose in heat. I had to tell him to knock it off, he's going to scare the old people picking up their prescriptions - maybe give them a heart attack. At least the bellowing kept the pan handlers who hang out front of the store from harassing us for spare change - which always makes me think of Ellen Degeneres - because you could tell from the expression on their weathered faces that they didn't have a clue what Jakob was capable of or if he was perhaps contagious.

Jakob doesn't stop making noises, and if it's 3:30 in the morning and you're begging him to be quiet because you all you really want to do is sleep and be warned, you're not a good parent in the morning if you go one more night without, he'll just get louder and come up with new noises to push you over the edge.

It's almost like he has tourettes. He's currently sitting quietly on the couch watching the TV that's not broken and every once in a while, just to let me know he's still suffering (though not battling death like he thought this morning and when I thought it was just a head cold - because he has had a diagnosis), he lets out the moose call, now sounding perhaps a bit more rabid than in heat.

Maybe he'll keep the skunks away - give purpose to our suffering. That wouldn't be so bad would it?