{"id":1654,"date":"2017-09-10T14:02:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T21:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=1654"},"modified":"2017-09-10T14:02:13","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T21:02:13","slug":"the-best-laid-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=1654","title":{"rendered":"The best laid schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best laid schemes o\u2019 Mice an\u2019 Men<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gang aft agley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 –Robert Burns<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget how furious my mother was with me that day. I was about seven years old, and spending the day at my grandparents\u2019 house while Mum ran last-minute errands. The next morning my parents, sisters and I were to leave on a camping trip, the first real vacation my family had ever had; Dad was an auto mechanic, and summer was his busiest time, with all the beach-goers flocking into our seaside town and needing help with their vehicles.<\/p>\n

That afternoon I started to feel poorly. Grandma felt my forehead and promptly tucked me into bed. By the time Mum bustled in to pick me up the cause of my misery was obvious: my body covered with the red blisters of chickenpox.<\/p>\n

\"passport<\/a>The memory of my mother weeping with disappointment came back to me two decades later. My husband, children and I were living in California, and could finally afford a return trip to New Zealand, our home country, after seven years abroad. My letters to parents for the previous several months had been full of plans and itineraries. About three weeks before our scheduled flight, David, our almost five-year old, came down with chickenpox. We phoned with the news. A few days later I wrote:<\/p>\n

11 May 1968<\/em>
\nI did write to you earlier in the week, but it was obsolete before it was even posted, so I tore it up instead. Isn\u2019t this business just typical of kids? Anyway, here is the present state of play: we have<\/em> bookings …<\/em> [revised details]… But this flight depends on Simon <\/em>[our two-year-old] coming out in spots this weekend, or Tuesday at the latest. The chances are higher that we shall postpone again until the following week \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is my calculation of the odds: Incubation period 11-21 days. Say David came out in spots on the 11th day, and Simon, from the same contact, on the 21st day (i.e., next Friday) he has two weeks to have it over with.<\/em><\/p>\n

Say Simon missed David\u2019s contact, and gets it from David, he can come out in spots on the 11th, 12th, or 13th day, and has 11 days, or a reasonable chance, to be free of scabs. (The airline will take him if a doctor will certify that he is not contagious.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Say Simon decides not to get it at all, he will have passed the 21st day by two days.<\/em><\/p>\n

The only problem will be if he gets it from David after the 13th day. The 14th day is borderline; after that we would have to cancel. We are in a bit of a quandary as to what to do then \u2026 Meanwhile we are all twiddling our thumbs, and willing Simon to produce \u2018chickenpops\u2019, as he calls them. It seems such an awful thing to do to such an innocent little poppet, but so far he has remained obstinately clear-skinned and perky\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

The ironic thing is that we had a mumps crisis last week. One of the children\u2019s closest friends came down with mumps about two weeks ago. We flapped around for a while, seriously considered gamma globulin, in spite of the cost (about $60 just for shots for myself and the children). We had braced ourselves to go through with it, when at the last minute the doctor just couldn\u2019t get hold of any, so decided to try a new mumps vaccine instead. This is a lifelong immunity, but doesn\u2019t take full effect for a month. By this time, he hoped that the vaccine would have built up enough antibodies to resist the disease. So far it is working. It is quite interesting being guinea-pigs, and considerably less expensive, at only $5 each. So instead we get the chickenpox!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026I have just come in from a walk \u2013 after four days in the house with kids, I needed it, but have come back feeling more depressed than ever about the whole business.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monday \u2013 Have postponed until 31 May\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

20 May 1968<\/em>
\nBelieve it or not, Simon actually produced some \u2018chickenpops\u2019 today, so we have started believing again that we are really coming. \u2026 I\u2019m still not really convinced that we will arrive, but as we are going in this Wednesday to pick up the tickets, I had better stir myself out of this legarthy.<\/em><\/p>\n

The irony of this story is that when we finally arrived at Nandi, Fiji on our way to New Zealand, the immigration officer noticed that David\u2019s smallpox vaccination was outdated. (You needed this at that time to get into New Zealand). In our panic over chickenpox, we has totally spaced on this detail. Fortunately the officer was kind \u201cJust get it done as soon as you get there,\u201d he said as he stamped our papers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best laid schemes o\u2019 Mice an\u2019 Men \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gang aft agley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 –Robert Burns I\u2019ll never forget how furious my mother was with me that day. I was about seven years old, and spending the day at my grandparents\u2019 house while Mum ran last-minute errands. The next morning my parents, sisters and I were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,100,389,251],"tags":[463,464,254],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1659,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions\/1659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}