My throat hurts. I am in a bad mood. I have been taking care of sick people for a month straight and have avoided catching it the whole time. I have one child in grade school, one in preschool and one in the nursery at church. Do you understand what this means? Let me tell you…….
One drink at the drinking fountain can do us in for a month! One child sucking on the plastic food, pretending to eat a germ-covered French fry, can just about make us bed ridden. One energy-filled little boy, chasing another can end up getting coughed on, and there you have it—the sickies are spread. If you haven’t picked up on the picture I’m trying to paint in my overwhelmed, white-blood-cell-driven state, then let me just tell you: I am only one person. I can’t be with three different people every second of the day, and I wouldn’t want to, either. There are a million ways for germs to spread, and in my house, that pretty much makes it three million. So I ask you, how can we avoid it? One person gets something, and then the whole house is weakened. With the immune system down, another [healthy] child brings home some kind of germ and the weakened child gets it. Next thing I know, I am living surround sound cough attacks. After weeks of coughing, hacking, phlegm everywhere, boxes of used tissues, wiping off puke from sweaty faces, holding shaking bodies, reducing 103 temperatures, trips to the doctor and pharmacy, pneumonia, being awakened in the night countless times for a myriad of reasons and non-stop fighting between the youngest two, and I am about to lose it.
So here I sit on New Year’s Eve, frustrated as I type with all the coughing shorties behind me watching Over the Hedge (and still fighting) and wonder if we should quarantine ourselves until our systems are strong again. I wonder when that will be. Hopefully it’s before they put me in the loony bin.
sunday scribblings
June!
1 week ago
