Unclean! Unclean!

Oh man. I just went outside and painted a big letter Q on my front door, in heavy, dripping paint.

Q, for “Quarantined.”

Last Monday, after running around with the little ones after school to buy last-minute gifts for their mother’s birthday, right in the middle of dinner, Patch announces that her stomach feels funny.

She barfs.

I take Little One to the middle school, to band practice. While I’m gone, Patch barfs again. While I’m home, she barfs yet again. Then, when I go to pick up my oldest at band practice ninety minutes later, I learn that she christened the middle school band room bathroom with barf.

Oh dear.

I felt good all day, and all evening. Until 11:15.

Then I barfed.

I stayed home, unpaid, from work for the next two days to watch my daughters and take time to get myself healthy. All told, all tallied, we’ve barfed just under two dozen times.

Tuesday I slept a lot – something like ten hours during the day – that weird, off-putting feeling of half-waking, half-dreaming as the sunlight and shadows grow and diminish across the room. But I managed to sneak in viewing 1979’s Alien with Little One. Ah, a classic! She gave it an A-minus, and she jumped during all the requisite stomach-churning scenes. The next day we watched one of my favorite comedies, Planes Trains and Automobiles. They both laughed during all the requisite, stomach-chuckling scenes. Ah, good times!

Went back to work weak and shaky on Thursday, and finished strong on Friday. Then, yesterday, both little ones came down with regular, run of the mill colds. I’m up to my ankles in used tissues right now. Ah, gross times!

Good news is I’ve read something like five hundred pages in The Terror, Dan Simmon’s 956-page speculation on what happened to the ill-fated 1840s expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. Just found out the book is in development to become an AMC series. Probably’ll be overdone, but has potential; I’ll have more to say when I review the book later this week (Note: its currently trending in the solid-A-with-a-couple-of-qualifiers).  

That’s really about all I did over the past six days. No further math explorations. Did not attend my tax class due to illness. A disconcerting sense of time is flying by faster and faster, and nothing is getting accomplished. Something needs to get done, but of what I know not.

Well, I guess I can start by scrubbing that giant red letter Q off my front door.