Digging Out

A week ago last Friday, Connor came into my bedroom at 4 AM complaining of burning eyes and a sore throat. This would devolve into him falling over in the bathroom the next night saying that he couldn't control his body. Luckily, he realized he was falling and thumped down to the step stool, so was uninjured. But those are words that cause more than a little alarm - particularly when coupled with what had become a very high fever.

On Sunday morning, Ed tracked down Tamiflu at a pharmacy about a half hour away (the only pharmacy in our County that had the medicine was closed until Monday) and Connor started taking the very gross, but seemingly effective medicine.

By Monday night, Helen would suffer Connor's fate, coupled with an ear infection. The highlight of her flu must have been stepping out of the car at the pediatrician's office and vomiting. Well timed, Helen. She was barely mobile at this point, so I was carrying her around bundled up in a favorite blanket. We saw a friend's dad at the pediatrician - at least half the class would fall before Tuesday.

Ed was down, and definitely hit the hardest. The pediatrician took mercy on me and hooked me up with my own prescription of Tamiflu. I would fall Tuesday evening. I was pretty confident I was going down, and I was also pretty confident that as soon as I got off the plane and saw my dad, it would be over for me. It was.

By now, Helen and Connor were pretty much recovered, which means they had energy, but I was in need of about 24 consecutive hours of sleep. I was incredibly grateful to be at my parents' home, where they took care of the kids completely for the next couple of days.

Christmas came with everyone feeling pretty good and finally, we are all in good shape.

I took eight days off from running. This is the longest running break I have taken since I started running seriously last Thanksgiving. If I hadn't already signed up for a marathon in the spring, I'm pretty sure I would've just sat out from running until spring - but instead, I logged 18 miles on Friday, 3 recovery miles on Sunday, and another 4 in the snow this morning. This part of life is back on track.

My inbox remains a disaster. Most of the emails will be deleted, unread, after a quick scan of subject lines.

I have decided to put sets of legos together with Connor. Some of his lego sets have been damaged through play (a good thing!), many were taken apart when we had renters (which is why I feel obligated to help Connor put them together - he doesn't even directly benefit from the renters, but he bears most of the cost), and some just get taken apart because pieces are needed elsewhere (also a good thing). As I slog through old sets, Connor has been putting together Christmas lego presents and has big plans for a lego display, once we get everything together. While we lego together, we chat, which has been pretty fun.

Helen has taken to the workshop Santa gave her with a vengeance, producing a robot and a shelf (to be featured soon on these pages). The workshop is in the basement, near where Connor and I sit putting legos together, so it definitely feels like we're all hunkering down.

And after the flu, that's exactly what we need to do.

Elaine