Weekend Assignment #290: Sick Call

My Internet connection as been spotty today, so I hope I can finish this and send it out.

Anyway, Karen wants to know how often we get sick.

Weekend Assignment: #290: Are you one of those lucky people who hardly ever get sick, or do you tend to catch every cold or flu or virus that comes along? And when you do get some infectious disease, do you stay home, or try to keep going?

I don't think I get sick that often, but my frequency has increased since we've had kids. They are little bacteria and virus factories. When I do get sick, though, I get sick. Like, incapacitated sick. I don't know why, but I'm useless. I just want to curl into a ball and die. My head will hurt, my back won't let me stand up straight, basically I look like an 80 year-old man who was born without a spine.

There was one time when I was sick as a kid, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and I passed out and smacked my head on the linen closet door. I wasn't sick when I went to bed, and I didn't realize anything was wrong when I first woke up, but as I was standing there the room was growing dark and I knew something was wrong. I tried to get back to my bed, but, obviously, I didn't make it. The door still has the dent on it. I should have taken a picture of it to post along with this. Just imagine one of those doors with the slats on it, and the bottom 1/6th are a bent into the shape of a head.

Extra Credit: Are you getting a flu shot this year?

I usually don't get the seasonal flu shot, but I will probably get the H1N1 shot, if it's available for my age group.

Marathon Weekend

It's the marathon weekend. And, I don't mean it's a long weekend. Well, it is a holiday weekend, but that's not what I mean either. Should I just get to the point?

This is the weekend that Jenn is running the Chicago Marathon. Sorry, The Bank of America Chicago Marathon. I need to make sure I get it right, just in case the FTC thinks there is some kind of blogging shenanigans going on.

Today Jenn went downtown to get her racing packet at the expo. I was supposed to go with her, but I ended up napping. I've been a little under the weather the last two days. I think I got it from Jenn since she had a bad cold about two weeks ago. At least it's me and not her!

Tomorrow we head downtown in the morning to drop off the dogs, come back out here to take our son to basketball, come home and get everything together, then go downtown again to get to our hotel. Yes, I know, we live in the same area as the marathon, but it's not easy to get there that early and Jenn wants as much sleep, and as little stress, as possible on the morning of the marathon. Plus, the hotel is part of her birthday present that was a few days ago. I mean the night's stay in the hotel. I didn't buy the hotel for her.

On Sunday, when it's going to be in the 30s(!), Jenn will head to the starting line, and the kids and I will go outside to see her run past the hotel just past the two mile mark. Then I'm going to go off with her sister and cousin and try to get glimpses of her throughout the race. I'm sure Jenn is happy it is going to be so cool the day of the race, but I'd like it to be a bit warmer. Say, 20 degrees or so. Seventy-five would be perfect!

Right now Jenn is watching The Spirit of the Marathon to get all psyched up to run the race. I'm here typing on the keyboard because I have no spirit for the marathon. It's too long. Way too long. The human body wasn't designed to run that far. That's why we invented cars. And before there were cars we made animals take us where we wanted to go.

So, to sum it up, we have a busy weekend. Not sure when I'll be back, probably not until Monday is my guess. I may have to carry Jenn around the house after she is done and I can't type while doing that.

Have a good weekend!

Sleeping on the couch

No, I'm not in trouble with Jenn. I would have titled that, "In the Doghouse," or, more likely, I wouldn't talk about it at all. I've been sleeping on the couch because I have the annoying cold that is circulating around the Internet. No, I'm serious. Half the people I follow on Blogger, Word Press, Twitter, or Facebook are sick. Maybe it's some kind of new biological weapon that's being sent out by some nefarious government. No? Okay, either way, I've felt lousy for a while and now I'm at the point where, when I lay down, I start coughing. It is very irritating. This is the part of a cold that I hate the most. I'm exhausted, I go to bed early to get some rest, and then I start coughing 20 minutes later. Usually just after I fall asleep. So, I've been going downstairs to sleep on the couch where I can sleep in an upright position. It seems to help a bit. As an added bonus for Jenn, I'm not coughing in her ear. No matter what people might say, that is not romantic at all.

What I'm trying to say, is that I have a good reason why I've been slacking a little bit here. I'm planning to go back to daily blogging. I know you are all excited about that.

Anyone watch the Oscars? For those of you following me on Twitter, I'm sorry. I was bored and I couldn't stop typing stuff. I hope I didn't fill your feed up with too much garbage. Jenn said I was being a little mean at times, but it was all meant in fun. Sarcasm is hard on Twitter. I will say that it was a change of pace for the Oscars. Maybe not necessarily a nice change, but it was a little different. They could have cut out the second musical number, and maybe have only two people present awards to the actors. Since they had five people it made it seem like those awards were so much more important than the others. Don't you think?

I took this picture of my daughter's bed today. The cleaning lady was just here and made it up nice and set all her animals up.

It's a good thing she is small. Look, Clifford is even trying to get out and get some space.

A good start to the week

It was not a pleasant start to the week in our household. Let me tell you a little about it.

On Sunday, according to every calendar (except the one in our laundry room) Sunday is the start of the week, I worked during the day, then we went to a party at night. There are a group of us from work that were hired on the same date, so we got together to celebrate our tenth anniversary. It was fun. We all work different shifts, and different day off rotations, so we don't get to see each other as much as most co-workers do. It's interesting to see how much things have changed since we were hired. Some have gotten married, kids have been added, one has a daughter in college now; in other words, we are all getting old.

Anyway, since the party was on a Sunday we knew we wouldn't be able to stay long because the kids had school the next day. That worked out well for me. After we ate I felt lousy. I was pretty sure it was my acid reflux/ulcer problems kicking in because of the pasta sauce. So, we packed it up and left there just before 8 pm. The party was only a few miles from the house so we were home and had the kids in bed by 8:30pm, not too bad for a school night.

Because of my (what I thought) acid reflux I planned on sleeping downstairs in the recliner. For those of you who don't have the problem, laying down with acid reflux is not fun. Not that sitting up helps much, but it's better than laying down. Anyway, by about 1:00am, I realized it was something different. I won't go into details, but it was a long night. I posted a message on Twitter (are you on Twitter? Why not?) about how I'd rather have the little alien bursting out of my gut like in the movie Alien. No alien came out, though at times I wasn't so sure it wouldn't happen.

When Jenn and the kids got up, I went upstairs to bed to try and get some sleep. Jenn came in about 20 minutes later to say our son wasn't feeling well, she wasn't either, so she was going to stay home, too. So, what we ended up doing was trading off sleeping. I slept until about 11:30 am, then Jenn slept until about 1:30pm, then I went back to bed and slept until about 3:30pm. It was a fun day! I still felt lousy after 5:00pm, so I called in sick for work today as well. I feel better, but not 100 percent.

I've been saying this since since my son was sick last week; I'm glad we are getting this over with before Christmas.  We've had one really bad Christmas, we don't need another one.

There is some virus going around people. I recommend wearing hazmat suits until this passes. Maybe after the winter is over. Save yourselves! 

A simple question of the day

I'm home with my sick daughter today, so that means little playing on the interwebs. So let me ask you something.

Have you ever:

Filled the dishwasher and forget to turn it on?

Put clothes and laundry detergent in the washing machine and failed to turn it on?

Put clothes in the dryer and forget to turn it on?

If you answered yes to any of the above: Which irritates you more. Why?

If you answered no to all of them: Don't rub it in.



I'm going to take a nap now. Sleeping on the floor next to a bed of a sick child isn't very restful.

Someone get the license number

I think a truck hit me in the middle of the night. I may have been in shock this morning so I didn't know the extent of the damage. I do now. I ache, my nose is like a faucet, and my eyes keep watering. I've never gotten sick this fast before. I was fine last night when I was at work. I should expect this though, the whole office is sick. With the way the office is set up we should just spit on each other all day. It wouldn't be any different. I'm going to start wearing a Hazmat suit to work. It's the only way to stay healthy.

Karen has a good weekend assignment. I'll get to it later. I can't type anymore.