Monday, November 16, 2009

I need some Lysol over here!

This is me. I'm officially seeking out a hazmat suit now, because there is a plague on our house.

In the ten weeks the kids have been back to school, seven of them have seen at least one home sick. We've gone through three flus and three colds, and this morning when I went to wake up my littlest, she was asleep amid a pile of kleenexes.  When I woke her up and asked how she felt, she answered, "A little cruddy."

Sigh. So she's home today.

And it's not just my house. In my writing group of seven women, two have the flu, one has strep throat and ear infections, one had a horse fall on her, one sprained her ankle playing tennis, and one had an as yet undiagnosed illness that is leaving her spinning with dizziness and in pain.

We don't even all live in the same country!!

Sometimes I wonder if God lets us get sick to slow us down. This weekend my obligations towards publishing multiplied in both size and stress. I got my galley proofs (Woo Hoo!!!!  It looks exactly like a real book!!!), am deciding on cover designs (hopefully done after about a hundred trials and tweakings), rewrote the blurb for the back of the book (which took way, way longer than it should have, because hey - this is the one on the back of the book!). Literally on Friday night I disappeared into my laptop and didn't emerge until this morning, when my husband went back to work and I had to get the kids up and off to school.

The plan was, of course, to disappear back into the manuscript and work on proofing the proof.

But then I woke up my daughter and...snot city.

So now I'm tempering my obsessive reading with some Cyberchase, cuddles, and picture books. Which, as it turns out, you can still do with a hazmat suit on.

8 comments:

  1. I know how you feel, we've had a sick household since September, plus a thrown out back and now a sprained knee. It's in the air.

    Can't wait to see your cover.

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  2. For a second I thought you had 7 kids and I was going to be REALLY impressed! Hope everyone is feeling better soon.

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  3. Patti - you'd fit well into our writing group!!

    LisaandLaura - ha ha! I went back and read it and that's exactly what it sounds like!! You'd think as a writer I'd have better use of language, but I was writing in a fog of aerosol anti-bacterial spray. I thought about clearing that paragraph meaning up and then decided not to. Let people be in awe of my writing with 7 kids! :)

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  4. SNOT CITY!

    Man, I have been lucky. The stuff that ails me is not contagious. Thankfully.

    Who started saying that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger? Whoever it was couldn't have been a mother.

    Hang in there. I'm glad you got lots done this weekend!!

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  5. Heidi - I don't know that I'd call having a horse fall on you lucky!! I think I'd take a little snot any day over that!

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  6. Good lord- kids are certainly little petrie dishes aren't they? I hope everyone is well soon! You kids will have nice nurturing memories of you. That's worth a couple days of less work right?

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  7. So far we have avoided any serious illnesses, but I also don't have children going to school and bringing back all of their germs. Yes, lots of lysol. Kill those germs. I agree that sometimes sickness does make us slow down.

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  8. LOL Re: Sue and her petri dishes comment. This cracks me up.

    Well, Hazmat or not, I hope you don't get it! Remain healthy, my dear!

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