Icky Monday

It’s been a miserable few days here at the Jones household. First my eldest came down with something that knocked him out of commission on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then it hit my wife and me. Head cold, general aches, that kind of thing. I managed to work through it on Thursday after resting a little extra, fully expecting to bounce back by Friday. I have a pretty high constitution, despite the fact that I’m not a particularly robust looking guy, and I almost never get sick.

This time, though, my wife and I got worse and worse, bad enough that she called in Friday (by Thursday she had mostly lost her voice). Bad enough that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I wasn’t good for anything except lying on the couch. Usually I’m the first one in the family to bounce back from anything, but this time it hit me the hardest. I did some reading, but I was in enough discomfort that writing or revising weren’t real options. Today I finally feel about as good as I felt last Thursday, which is pretty icky, but which is the picture of health compared to the last three days.

It’s wonderful now not to have an unrelenting sinus headache that feels like someone’s taking a pick axe to my skull, and I look forward to having the rest of the symptoms dissipate as well. This whole experience has been a stark reminder of how much I take my good health for granted and how I should be a lot more grateful for it.

In any case, despite reading through a mountain of hardboiled fiction while sick, there’s no Hardboiled Monday today because I was reading to help ignore the pain and haven’t had a chance to analyze anything. There are mounds of laundry to do, bills to write, papers to file, a grocery trip necessary, and many, many revisions that still need to be done on the several works in progress.

Also, now that I can apparently sleep without waking up sneezing or shivering I think I might take a couple of long naps, because I still feel pretty beat.

Next year I’m definitely getting the flu shot.

I hope the rest of you are well.