How can it be? So early in the school year? Ugh. Ew. I Don’t Like This.
It came upon me suddenly, at the tail end of our first Monday in school. We’d had our day, and been to the store, and I was making dinner. And somewhere between getting out the rice cooker and adding the meat to the stir-fry, I realized that my knees were aching (that’s what happens with me) and my back and head, too, and oh, I was not feeling well.
Bill sent me to the bath and then to bed immediately after dinner. Propped up on pillows, I helped Emma with her homework before fading into that awful sick-sleep. You know the kind: weird dreams, trouble breathing. Yuck. I dreamt of former students who appeared in my classroom suddenly and unannounced, expecting for all the world to learn something. I was glad to see them but strangely unnerved, and awoke profoundly aware that the school day was yet ahead of me.
A hot shower and ibuprofen served me well enough through a long day of teaching and a faculty meeting and taking Emma Grace to choir and Everett to a drum lesson. To say I was glad to get home is a bit of an understatement.
Last night I rediscovered the miracle that is Alka-Seltzer Cold medication. I daren’t inhale while drinking the accursed stuff but, oh, bliss, the cessation of aching that followed. I took some again mid-day and so the aching did not resume until after we got home. I did have chills– the kind that, running my hands under hot-water in the faculty bathroom– made me briefly entertain the notion of climbing into the sink. My voice abandoned me (almost) entirely sometime during seventh period. Tonight, again, Bill sent me packing after bed. I’ve been working here for some time now, and he visits me with fresh doses of hot tea.
My children wish they were sick. Or so they said at dinner: “I wish I could be sick.” “Yeah, and then I could stay home all day and watch television.”
Staying home has occurred to me, but it’s just too early in the year for that. And besides, staying home for a teacher doesn’t mean television. It means lesson plans and late-night communiques with subsitute teachers and make-up work on both ends of the absence.
It’s not worth it.
So I will ride it out. I’m sure I’ll be better tomorrow. How long can it possibly hang on?
I just hope it doesn’t ruin my weekend.
