In Bed with Bug not so Bad

I am sick as a dog. I feel like horse shit. Why do we always compare ourselves to animals when we feel lousy? I wake up and I fall asleep again. This is the first time in recorded history - that means that I can remember - that Ball & Chain is actually accepting that I am ill without using passive-aggressive maneuvers to imply that I am just wanting attention. It has never mattered what the illness has been - ruptured cysts, ruptured disc, migraine headache - a bit more than the usual litany of middle-aged complaints, but nothing too terrible. Nevvuthuless, he has always managed to sigh, to outright complain, to kvetch (a nagging complaint) about the disruption in his plans, be they ever so small. Never mind that I could not move, or that I was vomiting, or that everyone else at school had the flu, too. When I had it, it was an exaggeration.

But I digress. It's the day before Father's Day, and Ball and Chain is actually quite sympathetic to the little bug the little doobers seem to have given me as a parting gift at the school year's end. He sees me doing nothing on a beautiful day and he realizes hmmmm, most days she's fine! He does some laundry and he realizes hmmmm she's done the last few loads. He may have noticed that I do not have my usual beauty pageant presentation. The fact is we are cultural opposites. In my family, if someone had a cold, it was pull out the thermometer, push the fluids. In his family, if I tell his mother I'm sorry she's sick, she protests that she is not sick, even as she blows her nose repeatedly and hacks all over everyone.

Years ago, Big Kid was seriously ill. Then it was scary. We both knew how sick he was and I took him to the hospital while Ball & Chain stayed with Rugelah. That sickness lasted a long time. Yet somehow we have reverted to our old neuroses. Every once in awhile, one of our kids has a symptom and we both do sit up and pay attention, or sometimes I sit up and pay attention and Ball and Chain wakes up a bit and realizes. We were lucky then, even though other people thought we were unlucky. And now, instead of falling into a hole of cryptic sentences to protect my kid's privacy, I will say I am really not so sick at all.