Demon on my Chest

So you know when you feel like this??  The Nightmare, Fuseli 1781

A toddler stuck his fingers in my mouth last weekend and I am now fucked.  Because why?  Because an adult’s immune system sucks.  Kids?  Kids can be infected with a freaking alien plague, take some Dimetapp and be fine.

“Mummy I’m good to go.  If I stayed home, I’d miss recess/hockey/dance/horse back riding!  Time is a wastin’!”

“You have a fever of 103!”

“I feel nothing – let’s go!!!” *

We all have our signals – that first feeling where you know, you just know that you’re fucked with whatever illness has insidiously infiltrated your person.  Me?  My legs ache.  David, it’s his throat.  Rissa, she starts sniffling.

So yesterday, when my legs felt a little off, it was just a matter of time before I was caught in the toddler virus vortex.  The entire back of my body hurts.  The back of my eyeballs, head, lungs, ass, legs, arms, throat, tongue, shoulders…  uterus…    I’m pretty sure that I can feel the tonsils and adenoids that I had removed when I was 11.

I have things to do today.  I have a whole list of shit that needs to be done.  It’s a week until Christmas!!!  I had a day planned with pre-holiday tasks that began with doing (and this is just how dumb I am) my 42 minutes of exercise.  Yes, I am THAT dumb – I am still considering exercising – even though I know that you’re supposed to rest when you’re sick.  Thing is?  I’m worried that I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I don’t exercise.  Jogging would be overly ambitious, I’m ‘with it’ enough to recognize that.  But walking?  Not at my regular pace (that would be silly), but at a completely reasonable lower speed that might trick my body into thinking that it actually did expend energy?  That is doable.  Except that I can’t tell David that I did it.  His last words before he left the house today were “Get some rest.” Accompanied by a meaningful ‘you will be in so much trouble if you don’t’ look.

So here I sit, clad in David’s extra-large bathrobe, the personification of pathetic, trying to figure out if there’s a way to get away with being stupid, instead of watching Buffy and/or Firefly all day.  Oh God, I really AM sick.  The virus has hit my brain too!!

Snuggling in one’s partner’s robe can mask a lot.

*Please for the love of all deities – DON’T send your child to school when they have a fever!  They are NOT well, even if they think they are.  Don’t be the parent of Typhoid Frickin’ Mary and start a flu/cold epidemic because it was inconvenient for you to take a day to look after your kid.