Sick Day

I could feel it coming on the moment I woke up this morning. You know the signs. Scratchy throat, itchy eyes and you sound like Toni Braxton when you try to sing in the shower. This always happens to me when the seasons change. I catch colds more frequently than my children who use their sleeves as Kleenex and share juice boxes with the cats.


There was a time when sickness brought a sort of welcome relief. I’ve always been on life’s treadmill, constantly trying to get ahead in one way or another, so even when I was young it generally took the flu to force me to rest. Sickness also gave me permission to control the remote (normally my father’s domain), ask mom to make me grilled cheese sandwiches and fall asleep on the couch. I generally bounced back within a couple of days thanks to infusions of orange juice and wearing fuzzy slippers.

Now I’m full-on sick, waking up early so that I can print my son’s homework project and applying makeup so that I don’t look like I forgot to remove my Halloween costume because I have a full day of work ahead. Truth be told, I haven’t had a sick day since 1996 when I became a mother. I had no idea that motherhood was truly a 24-7 hands on—no time off job. If I had I might not have applied for the job in the first place—no matter how cute I thought my baby would look in tiny Adidas shoes.

When I do manage to get home and slip into my PJ’s, my family still doesn’t get the hint—unless you count my husband yelling, “Leave your mother alone! She’s sick,” from the kitchen moments after he finished asking me where the can-opener lives. Once dinner is done, one of the children will wake me up from my maximum ten minute siesta and ask me if I want to come into the kitchen and eat or if Dad should bring it to me. I think I’m always fairly clear about being uninterested in food when I ask if they can just hook me up to Nyquil intravenously—at least until my alarm clock goes off the next morning. The evening progresses with my family thinking that it’s restful to watch television while my youngest children fight on the floor next to me and my husband melts into the computer because he needs to make trades to his fantasy football team. I can’t get rid of them. Believe me, I’ve tried. They’ve remained steadfastly by my side, bugging me and waking me up through chick flick film festivals and food network marathons. Although I don’t suggest watching food network—it usually ends badly with someone asking if you’re feeling good enough to make the gingerbread oatmeal cookies.

I dream of true rest—even the drug induced variety but apparently there are people out there who would rather inject or smoke cold medicine than get over a cold using it so now all the drugs you can buy over the counter are basically baby aspirin. It’s either that or you can stand in line at the Walmart pharmacy, coughing on old people while they shoot you dirty looks, and pledge two forms of ID and a strip search before you can buy actual cold medicine. I had to defend myself to some pre-teen cashier at Target just the other day because her “system” didn’t want to sell me two boxes of cold medicine. I got called “Ma’am” and everything!!!

So here I am, screaming at my kids to go to bed so that I can curl up and actually get some sleep. The only problem is that they can’t hear me because I’ve lost my voice. Terrific.