Husband went on a business trip this week, and Aitch promptly fell sick. Normally when he’s sick he wakes up with a little fever and mopes around the house a bit until the ibuprofen kicks in, at which time he reverts to his normal self, and then I I take him out for lunch and call it a day at work. This time, thought, the drugs didn’t work. His fever was really high — as high as 98.8 according to the assortment of completely crap thermometers that he will tolerate, but he was burning up — and for hours he lay in bed, shivering, halfway between sleep and consciousness. And thus I endured a rite of passage that most mothers with two children would have experienced long ago: Home alone with one well child and one child who was too sick to move comfortably.

At first, this didn’t seem like it would present many logistical problems. It was raining, anyway; we would just hole up at home, and I would entertain Minor while Aitch rested. That worked the first night, but the next morning, I realized, holy cow, I still have to get Minor to school! And Dog to day care…and then both of them home from school…and, ideally, to the grocery store at some point.

The stay-at-home moms in the neighborhood have set up a kind of informal baby-sitting cooperative that allows them to trade kids and favors as the need arises. I have never really developed that kind of network. I have friends, but I don’t usually ask them to take the kids. When you work, the kids are in day care or school during the day, so it’s not really necessary. Also, if you pawn your kids off some Wednesday afternoon, then you may be expected to return the favor next Tuesday morning, when you were due to give an important presentation for work via teleconference. Mostly, I just don’t like asking for help. I feel that I’m lucky enough to make enough money that I don’t have to impose on my friends to do for free what I typically pay someone else to do. But in this case, I just needed twenty minutes here and there, so over the last few days I called on two friends and my housekeeper for some short-term free babysitting and dog wrangling (well, the housekeeper at least was getting paid, although it wasn’t in her job description).

I feel lucky to live in a place where, even if all the phone lines were down, I could shout out my window and have three or four neighbors available and willing to help me out in this way. With phone service, there are perhaps twenty or thirty people within a mile radius I could call on. Home alone is not that isolated.

What do you all do out there when you’re home alone and you need an assist?