Soooey!

At least one of my kids has the flu. I am diagnosing it as the Swine Flu, err "H1N1" to be politically correct, because as of last report, my doctor said that the seasonal flu had not surfaced in Michigan yet. So-o-o-o, 102-degree fevers, body aches, chills, sore throat, headache. . . . what does that sound like to you? Yep. It started on Sunday. She stayed home on Monday. I sent her on Tuesday because she had no fever in the AM. The fever came back Tuesday night, so she stayed home Wednesday. I sent her back to school Thursday. She called me at 10:30 AM and asked to come home because she was feeling faint. I made her stay home today just because.

Kid #2 had a temp of 101 last night, and so she also stayed home from school today, against her will, I might add, because she loves school.

The past few days, I've been dragging. This is not unusual. I often get fatigued when I've done too much and the past 2 weeks have been pretty busy. But today. . . .oh, today something else is obviously going on. I may not be swiney, but something is going on. I got 2 kids up for school, and then came back and slept until 10:45. I had to pry myself out of bed simply because I had to pee so badly. I decided to get something to eat. Went downstairs, grabbed a chocolate chip muffin and a little coffee. Hmm, that didn't sit right. But I still had to get groceries. I mean, like I really had to get groceries since the only thing to eat in our house was that chocolate chip muffin and a few well preserved pretzels from inside the sofa cushions. Luckily, the hubs was home, so I was free to go.

As I backed out of the driveway, the thought crossed my mind, "I really don't want to do this", and a few minutes later, "I really don't feel good". But I was driven by the fact that my children were going to have to eat lint for dinner if I didn't do something drastic. Luckily I only had to go to Aldi, which is a very small store where I happen to do a very large amount of my shopping. I got my cart and stepped inside, greeted by the sight of many, many people doing their pre-Thanksgiving shopping as well. Grrr. Get out of my way, people! I'm trying to get this trip done before I hurl! Occasionally, I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, the way I did in early labor, before the contractions got really bad. I prayed that I wouldn't contaminate anyone else. More importantly, I prayed that I wouldn't vomit on the canned soup. You know the old adage, "Never shop when you're hungry." Well, that wasn't a problem for me, as I had to force myself to put things into my cart because almost everything seemed repulsive to me. But I had to buy a lot of food - remember lint is on the menu at my house and Thanksgiving dinner is coming up. So I shoved food into the cart as I shoved down the urge to spew.

Finally I got done and tore open a bag of pita chips in the van. I thought maybe I was hungry. And I grabbed some sprite at a drivethrough. Ahhh, crisis averted, at least temporarily. Maybe it was just low blood sugar.

But there's something still going on with me, which is to be expected since I was taking care of a sick kiddo all week. I mean, it takes a lot out of you to sit down and play computer games while your kid lies on the sofa and occasionally barks out commands for you to meet their comfort needs. I took another nap when I got home from shopping. And now I'm sitting with a blanket over my knees because although my face is on fire, my feet are still freezing.

We were going to go to the annual Christmas Tree Lighting in downtown Lansing tonight, "Silver Bells in the City". But that doesn't seem prudent now. So we're going to stay home and put up our own Christmas tree.

I hope I don't puke on the ornaments.