Weekend of the Unwell

Hello from the Plague House! We don’t know what it was, but we do know it hated us and wanted us dead.

I don’t get sick very often. I wash my hands a lot. I mean, A LOT! So much that my kids complain about my chapped skin when I touch them. So does my husband. I have a bit of a Cinderella complex, so I tell them my hands are rough from doing too many dishes.

Monkey often tells me I should take a week off.  When I ask, “Who’s going to do the dishes?” he always volunteers his dad. We think Monkey is excellent management material.

I was rather put out with this virus for having the nerve to attack me. First, because it should be a universal law that moms are exempt from illness while the rest of the family has it. And, second, because there should be at least one bonus to having sandpaper skin like mine.

But I was not immune. For four days straight one or all of the three boys in the house had a temperature over 100. Friday I had a migraine then realized I was coming down with the crud. 

On Saturday I felt like death.

Freezing, aching death. 

Death under a frozen lake. 

My temperature was 99. 

Yeah, that’s as spectacular as it gets.

The four of us spent the entire weekend on the couch, which really should be fumigated now. I think we watched every episode of iCarly on Netflix. At one point we even watched a frequently interrupted, but seemingly important, football game. We decided to root for the Ravens because we liked the Edgar Allan Poe association, but even that proved a weak selling point and we went back to iCarly.

I’ve lost count of how many trips to Walgreens my husband or I made. Saturday night I made a late night run for Pedialyte popsicles and Gatorade. There’s no hiding your condition when you slouch through the Walgreens check-out with four different electrolyte replacement products. The cashier kept a good two feet between herself and the counter between us then Lysoled everything I’d touched as I walked out the door. I didn’t blame her.

The next night when I went back to buy humidifiers I actually combed my hair and kept the sniffling to a minimum. This time the cashier gave me a pleasant “Have a good evening” and no sign of the cross as I left.

The only good thing about being sick is giving myself permission to sit around and read all day. I started Cindi Madsen’s novel, All the Broken Pieces. I have to say, Cindi had a stroke of genius when she combined a modern-day Frankenstein story with the angst of a high school girl who wants to fit in and be herself. Makes me wish I’d thought of it.

So what makes you feel better when you’re sick? Movie marathons? Ice cream? Frightening Walgreen’s employees with your wretchedness?

Have you ever stuck tissues up your nose and waited for death?

And if you were Frankenstein’s monster, hiding on the fringes of society, what would you think of Beyonce’s half-time show?