They Got Me

 

Think of a dying swan, all pathos and elegance.

Or of a mighty bear, pulled down by a horde of yipping dogs. Or think heroic Boromir, fighting hordes of Orcs, falling at last full of arrows.

It was bound to happen.

 

I’ve had ongoing serious drama with my one and only child, the light of my life, for over a month.

Three weeks ago was my registrar’s last day; we’ve been stumbling by shorthanded at work since. And I’m the only one there who knows how to do her job…

We’ve been looking for a house. It was getting close to Go or No Go, and we found one. But we had to jump on it. And then we had to start packing (oh, we’d started. Yeah. We told ourselves that–we’ve started. WE HAD PACKED FIVE BOXES.)

We had to do stuff and other stuff and more stuff, and we ended up eating out more than we really should because who can even FIND the food right now, let alone the energy to prepare it?

I work in a school. Eight hundred kids, and all their germs. Visiting my kid in the hospital–more germs.

Tons of stress from every direction. Not a lot of time for sleep. Poor nutrition. Lot of germs. You can see this coming, right?

Yep. The germs got me. I have fallen at last, and worse, I’ve already passed it on to the roomie. I started Sunday; she started last night.

It’s just a cold. I tell myself that fifty times a day or more. It’s just a cold. It’s not like when I moved into this apartment, trying to do it with pneumonia. Nope, just a cold.

It had better be just a cold. Even so I’ll probably be moaning about it for days. Sorry if you have to be around me. I’ll try not to breathe on you.

And I’ll try to stop blowing my nose like the trumpet of a drunken elephant dying swan.

 

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