Signs You've Been Sick Too Long

There's an unfortunate club being formed in the area where I live, and unfortunately I have joined this unfortunate club. (The repetition is the literary version of scary music, letting you know something bad's coming. Think Jaws.) Yes, it's the annual stomach bug (aka the "Puke and Spew Until You're A Withered Husk" virus), and I've had it in spades. It's tapering off, and it is a measure of how much I love to write that I'm sitting here right now, still harboring this virus, punching out a blog. Or blob, as I accidentally typed and then corrected. That may be more accurate. We'll see.

I imagine that a doctor getting sick feels a certain interest in experiencing first-hand what he or she clinically diagnoses every day. In sort of the same way, while I was incapacitated I noticed things that peaked my interest (what little there was left), things that went on around me. With the three brain cells not devoted to getting me to the bathroom in time, I began compiling a mental list of these things, these signs that told me I'd been sick way too long. Maybe you'll find this list fascinating. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll leave me a comment like, "Dehydration can do funny things to the brain - don't write, drink!" and that is true. But hey, if rock groups can write platinum hits while on LSD, then I'm going to wring out SOMETHING from this sorry, dehydration-induced experience.

Signs You've Been Sick Too Long

1. If you're a mom, then getting sick isn't allowed in the first place. There is no acceptable length of time. You're sick, so you've already broken the rule. Shame on you.
2. You've memorized the daily TV lineup (that's an easy one).
3. Not only have you memorized the daily TV lineup, but you can locate each show of choice on the remote blindly while you have an icepack on your forehead, covering your eyes. (Top THAT.)
4. You take a nap with the icepack on your forehead, and you wake up with a strange sensation of frozen eyeballs because the pack slipped down over your eyes while you were asleep. That's not the sign you've been sick too long. What IS the sign is that you enjoy it.
5. You realize that the kids, who have basically been on their own while you're down, have not fought for 36 hours straight, and you don't question whether or not this means they are alive. You accept it and give thanks. And go back to sleep. Or the bathroom. Whatever.
6. You realize one kid has worn the same outfit since Wednesday night. And it's Friday morning. And you don't care. If you live, you'll fix it later. If you die, then it's no longer your problem.
7. You go on a fishing expedition in the kitchen to see what you can possibly keep down, and while looking you find the remote in the pantry (which I did, not 30 minutes ago). You quiz the kids - only out of idle curiosity, because the only thing liable to excite you right now is the plumbing system breaking down - and find out they actually had a good reason for putting it in there. And you APOLOGIZE FOR MOVING IT.
8. You notice a certain agenda to the TV lineup that traipses through your hazy day. First, there are the skin-care commercials, designed to get you a guy. Then there are the diet commercials, designed to get you in the clothes that will get you a guy. Oh, yeah, and make you feel good about yourself, blah, blah, blah. Then there are the childbirth shows, designed to show you what happens after you got the guy. I woke up from Sick Day #2 to screams emanating from my TV. I weakly raised my head, turned my blurry, tired eyes towards the screen, and beheld a woman giving birth to a breech baby, without an epidural. Heck of a way to wake up. (Of course, that's a heck of a way to give birth, too.) And last, there are the commercials that comfort you when you realize you got the guy, you got the baby, and are now wishing you'd thought about it all just a little more: Stouffers, Cadbury Eggs, Appleby's, McDonalds, and so forth. And just when you can't look at another chocolate egg or mozzarella stick without reaching for your ThighMaster, there are shows about people like the Duggars, God bless 'em, who have 19 kids. That's designed to show you, "See, it could be much worse." Only someone who's been sick and in the same room for four days running could possibly have the time to notice something like that. And then the whole shebang repeats: skin care, diet, birth stories, comfort food, 19 Kids and Counting. Over and over. What I really found funny was this: you know how every time the Duggars have a child, they change the title of their show to reflect the new number of kids? Well, yesterday I saw this: 9 am, 17 Kids and Counting. 9:30 am, 19 Kids and Counting. 10 am, 18 Kids and Counting. It's like they had twins between 9 and 9:30 but then accidentally left one at the mall between 9:30 and 10. I had to laugh. It just looked funny. But then, it would. I'm delirious.

Those are the signs. Read 'em and weep. That's all I've got time for. I'm going back to bed now.
See you later.