The Whining

My family is sick. Between the hacking and the moaning — and that blond lady rocking back and forth in a corner — our house has doubled as a sanatorium for over a week.

It’s terrible. If we were slightly sicker, I’d swear it was the flu, but I actually think it’s just a particularly nasty cold and we all have crap immune systems. Nevertheless, much like an undertow, the second I think we’ve turned a corner it pulls us back down again.

The worst part is that it seems to follow no discernible pattern. The Ogre got it first, and it started in his back. He didn’t feel sick, just thought he had tweaked a muscle at first. A day later, he was wondering if he’d thrown his back out, and I was convinced he was having a heart attack. But then the pain disappeared and the coughing began, followed by a day-long fever and a solid week of congestion.

Sienna went down next. The Ogre felt a little better on Fat Tuesday, so I jovially — and oh, so naively — made a King Cake to celebrate. We shared it with our neighbors, and everyone was happy — until the morning. Sienna, our force of nature, the child who is felled by neither illness nor injury, asked to stay home from school.

And she did. For the rest of the week she huddled on the couch, mainlining Flash and Doctor Who in a heap of blankets and misery. I got the cough on Thursday, but mine seemed mild. The boys remained unaffected, and despite a few sniffles, so did Charlotte. I began to hope, and then believe, that Sienna’s slow improvement heralded an end to this hitherto unremarkable illness.

Yesterday morning we were all stir-crazy. We’d been cooped up in the house for most of a week, and Sienna, still coughing but much improved, was on the verge of tunneling under the house just to escape it. So we went out to the Blues, Brews and BBQ festival in town, delighted with the fresh air, pulled pork, and sunshine.

The plan was to hang out at the festival for a while and then go to 5 pm Mass. We listened to music, the kids ran wild around the green, we ate barbeque and zeppole, and then we headed to Mass. As soon as we had stepped into the narthex and crossed ourselves, I collapsed into the nearest chair.

The Ogre looked at me and raised his eyebrows, since we usually sit in a pew in the actual church. I just shook my head weakly and said, “we better come back tomorrow.”

I actually had trouble getting to my feet. I felt like someone had slammed me between the shoulders with a baseball bat. I could hardly breathe, and gravity seemed to have a renewed purchase on my legs.

We finally got home — after an ill-advised trip to Publix where I yelled at the children, struggled to breathe, and generally scandalized the neighbors — and I collapsed. Since no one felt sorry enough for me to spoon-feed me the rest of our Ash Wednesday soup, I grudgingly did it myself. Then, in a total dereliction of duty, I fell asleep on the couch at 7:00 pm.

The Ogre did all the cleaning and pajamas and teeth-brushing and bedtimes, then woke me up with strict instructions to brush my teeth and drink some theraflu. Which I did, before going right back to sleep.

The theraflu was a wee bit too effective, because I finally woke up around 9:30. God bless my 9 year old, who heated up leftover French toast for her siblings and remembered to wipe Tank’s hands before letting them watch a movie on the couch. When I finally stumbled into the sitting room and threw myself down on the couch, Liam immediately curled up in my lap and looked up at me.

The child’s eyes were literally oozing. It was the most appalling thing I’ve seen in at least 3 days. It was like the virus had concentrated itself in his eyes and replicated with abandon, filling his sad blue eyes with green gunk and grossness. Then he started coughing, and I started coughing, and Sienna started coughing, and I began to have visions of us all languishing on the couch for weeks to come, coughing and coughing and coughing, totally isolated from the outside world until one day, when we had long-since stopped coughing but had gone mad from months of perpetual isolation, Charlotte and Liam stopped sleeping or eating and just stood in the hallway chanting, “come play with us, Mommy,” the Ogre built a wet bar out of the furniture and spent his days shaking martinis that no one drank, while I rocked back and forth in a corner, reading the writing on the walls

all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl all Netflix and no play makes Sienna a dull girl

and finally, Lincoln took an axe to the front door and chopped out a space large enough for his face, which he stuck into the Florida sunshine and screamed, “I GO, MOMMY!”

At this point, I decided I should probably take my temperature, but my computer was closer than the thermometer.

photo credit: by Zarateman (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons