A BUG’S LIFE
Knocked out by the flu, Kate’s clan is feeling rotten
Ifeel like all I write about these days is ill health. But it’s with good reason. We’ve been surrounded by it. Chewed up and spat out by it. We seem to be unable to stay well around here.
It’s like we’ve gone back to when the kids started preschool and brought home every bug going. I’m not sure what’s happened this year, but our house has resembled a large Petri dish. If there is a bug or virus going, we’ve grabbed it and all gone down like dominoes.
To say I am over it would be an understatement. You see, here’s the rub – mums don’t get permission to be sick. So the recent flu virus which wiped us out, and involved everyone in bed nursing aches, pains, fevers, headaches and coughs, did not include me getting to stay in bed. No, no, no. You see, as a mother, you can be the walking dead and children will still ask you, “What’s for dinner?” as though you’re somehow capable of getting up and cooking a huge meal.
They’ll cry out for tissues, lozenges, Panadol and Vicks. All the while, you’re in bed, dying quietly. But this is ignored because you can’t possibly be sick – you are The Mum. Then, the worst blow of all, your husband goes down with it. That’s an extra child right there. His inability to move is somehow greeted with reverence and respect by the kids, who seem happy to allow him to be ill – but not Mum.
And if the constant demand for food isn’t enough, there’s also the washing. Fevers and flu germs equal endless loads of sweaty, yucky PJs, pillow slips and towels. This piles up and up on the laundry floor like an ugly tower of rotting linen. The only tabs open on my laptop during this time were “laundromats that pick up” and “UberEats”.
I basically co-parented with UberEats through the whole thing. Every time a child asked what was for dinner, I’d motion at them to find the app on my phone and order. It would have been cheaper to buy the company.
At one point, I tried to order pears online from the supermarket (everyone was craving them so it was of course my job to sort that). But as I went to pull them out of the bag, I noticed a yellowy brown liquid running all over the bench. The pears were rotten, and the most overripe ones at the bottom of the bag had disintegrated and leaked all over the place. Cleaning up rotten pears was just what I felt like! Sadly, it meant the kids who’d waited for pears got no pears.
Not exactly winning at this being-sick thing, I’m now crossing all my fingers and toes that the winter bugs are behind us. My husband has returned to work, the kids are back to school and me? Oh, me?! I’m still getting through all that washing. Thanks for asking.