Charlie took a swig of his water, scraped his tongue with his teeth and contorted his face as if he’d just ingested lizard juice.

 "Dad, does everyone get ketones?"

"No," I told him. "I think mostly just people with diabetes."

Charlie stared at his water bottle and said nothing more on the subject. His lips, that wanted nothing to do with the water, were dry and colorless.

"Charlie, you have to drink the water," I said. "We need to get rid of these ketones."

"But it tastes terrible," he said. "The water doesn’t taste normal. I think it’s the ketones."

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Some freaky viral sickness has infected our house. It started with No. 2 who had a terrible fever over Memorial Day weekend. Several days after she got better, The Mr. came down with it. Now, No. 1 is on the tail end of it, but sadly he will miss his last three days of third grade because of this stupid flu-like virus.

I've often said that while I don't want to see my children sick, it's better for a well mom to take care of sick kids than for a sick mom to take care of well kids. That's up for debate, especially since my kids are getting to the point where they're fairly self-sufficient and if I were laid out on the couch No. 1 and No. 2 would be able to take care of No. 3. (I should say that The Mr. isn't a slacker, he works two of every three weekends, so when I'm home alone with the kids it's usually because The Mr. is working.)

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I'm no politician, but my day job does involve shaking the hands of many strangers. In the "normal" (i.e., non-diabetes-related) world, this is no big deal -- if the other person's hand is really icky, just use some hand sanitizer and be done with.

In the 1980's, AIDS-phobia taught us otherwise.

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