Plagues, Pox, Pukes, PC's and Preschools

They say that there is a plague of Bees here in Berlin this summer. It must be the very sudden very warm weather or something. It is really amazing, I have never seen so many Bees. They are everywhere. The whole town is open too in the summer, everyone eats outside all the shops are open to the street. The pastries in the bake shops are just blanketed in bees.
People don’t seem to mind much. They hardly swat. They just wait for the bees to go away from their food as they are eating. Surprisingly, there has only been one bee related death that we heard of (of course we are not exactly on top of the news these days) someone had an anaphylactic reaction while camping.
We have had about a sting a week (Zoe, Sophie (2x), Sharon so far, I think). But frankly, the bees are the least of our problems. It seems as though after a period of initial excitement and even some beginners luck we are now having a string of challenges.
We have been getting to know our neighborhood doctors and pharmacists quite comfortably and learning some German related to dosages and body parts and appointments.
The rash that Grace had since shortly after we arrived got progressively worse and troublesome. After a few missed diagnoses at one Dr and then again at the emergency room the pediatrician easily identified it as Impetigo (Staf infection) and a nasty case of it to boot. She went on antibiotics orally and topically and after a week now it is nearly gone. It did however delay her start of preschool which was fine since I was still agonizing over the choice of which one to go to.
Just when Grace’s rash was getting under control Zoe woke in the night with a high fever. She was miserable most of the night and vomited several times. Fortunately, her body seemed to fight it off and within a day she was pretty much over it.
While all this was going on Fritz was trying to get some work done. He persistently worked through the problem of connecting up on his laptop and between a local Internet café and a generous (and unwitting) neighbor with wireless, he was able to do some email for a while. Then one day out of no where he got a blue screen and lost his hard disk. It’s a good thing that he is so careful about backing up his work. Unfortunately, he backed up his work computer on to his laptop because when the air shipment of his office finally arrived and cleared the bureaucracy of customs to be delivered on our curb, Fritz found that the Xerox shippers didn’t put any packaging at all around his work computer they just dropped it in a box. We are crossing our fingers about that one. At least he has a last back up on disk so in time he can rebuild everything.
When I took Grace in to get her Impetigo the pediatrician confirmed that I had gotten it as well so back on antibiotics I went. The office got a bit of a kick out of us all being sick as I asked him to check over Zoe after her fever too.
Hopefully we can put all of our bad luck and distractions behind us and move on to more exciting things. When Grace gets the green light from the doctor we can lock and load on the preschool choices, the source of a great deal of Jackie induced angst for the family. Here’s to the future!