Sick and Tired...

I don't know how moms get that specialized nurse training. You know, instinctively knowing your child is sick? Knowing by the way they sound or look that they've got something? I just know I have it. And that it's easier to nurse someone else than myself.

Sunday night Just Joe had a fever. Being the Daddy-type person he is, I guess he doesn't come equipped with the Sick Detector to know that. But when I came to bed he was huddled up under three blankets, wearing his pj pants and his shirt. You could fry an egg on him. He would have screamed had I put my cold feet on him; and he screams like a girl, so we definitely avoid that when possible.

So I hunt down the thermometer and make him sit still. 101.2. Now I'm in Nurse mode, and get him the ibuprofin and a cool rag. And I make him strip down and get out of those covers. I threaten him, like I do the children when they are feverish, to put him into the tub if he doesn't cool down, or at least to get the spray bottle and mist him until his side of the bed is all wet. He cools down after a half hour or so, and thus I feel comfortable going to sleep.

Monday comes and I've got a big closet-cleaning project at the elementary school, to which I've invited the entire school. Two people show, but we get the work done, toss some things, and make arrangements for others to be hauled off. But it wears me out! I leave the girls to amuse themselves and have to go lay down. But in the evening, I'm getting the achy stuff crawling up my back. JJ's massage and some ibuprofen and Tylenol PM make it possible for me to sleep.

Yesterday, after waking up, though, I discovered it was back with a vengeance. I called the prayer meeting lady and begged off, told the Little Critter I'd have to have lunch with her another day, and went right back to bed and slept almost four hours. That was great! The healing power of sleep!

Except that it was back last night, and my fever was 101.4. I'm so competitive, I had to out-fever JJ, of course.

I don't remember how to be sick! I'm almost NEVER ill. I get maybe one cold a year, and I lose my voice for a few weeks in the fall occasionally, but not fevered, dragged-down, miserable, no-energy sick. And when JJ and the Bigun were fussing over me last night, offering milkshakes from Whataburger, Slushes from Sonic, trips to the drugstore for medicine, I couldn't think of a thing I wanted. Except more sleep. Which turned out to be full of strange dreams of the Bigun flying me in a plane and my former director of Bible Study talking to me in my shower. IN the shower WITH me. Huh.

Today the ache is there, but the errands are also there. I have to check the business mailbox, mail out my coupons to the people on my trains, pick up the Kroger ad, go buy the Zicam people are telling me to get, and hopefully return the rancid milk (which has three days left to go before it's expired) to Randalls. Oh, and do the makeup lunch with the LC, and listen to her friend's mom justify her life. Again. But that's another post entirely.

So prayers and good thoughts would be most appreciated. Or a clone, maybe?