Waiting for the Flu

You know the ad where the mom is sick but still has to take care of her sick kids and her sick husband? I don't want to be sick like that.

I want a good old-fashioned, laid up, splayed out kind of sick.

The kind where there's NO question as to whether or not to get out of bed, whether or not to call in sick, whether or not to continue to try to hit the regular day time marks--making school lunches, getting dressed, meeting the school bus, writing thank you notes for christmas gifts that were opened, say, a month earlier.

That's what I want.

I know *intellectually* that I don't want the stomach flu that's going around my school. *Intellectually*, I know it's an awful thing. I know that if I end up getting it I'll be miserable and think I'm going to die as my stomach gets turned inside out in every way possible again and again and again, and I'm not going to be able fathom how I could have ever welcomed the torment.

BUT! part of me craves it. Too sick to do anything but maybe catch up on some of my recorded shows...or to (finally!)plow through the Freaks and Geeks box set my tenant loaned me two years ago. Not to mention a head start, maybe?, on losing a few of the seventeen (yes, seventeen) pounds I gained in the last year--a final year in the house, in close proximity to our fully-stocked kitchen, before sending my youngest off to school and rejoining the work force.

A good friend with one child and a high-powered job considered having another baby JUST for the maternity leave. I get that. Just a chance to step out of it all and hole up for a little while. She ended up with shingles and was miserable. But maybe just a little bit well-rested? I remember bringing her a sandwich and eating with her on the stoop, in the sunlight, in the middle of what would have been a work-day. That's a nice alternative to getting everyone up and out and returning home after dark.

No new babies for me. But just a mini-three day respite. I'd like that. I think.

And, again, none of this wishy washy can I ask for the day off of everything kinds of walloping colds. The real thing. The obvious thing. But not over this three-day weekend please, and not on a Friday. Tuesday morning'd be just fine.