I spent the weekend in bed or on the couch. This time spent was neither in a relaxed, lounging type manner nor in the manner someone in their younger twenties might be spending a weekend. No, very little relaxation or sexy time was to be had this past weekend. I was sick. Very sick. BigBrother brought home some form of a virus, one we can speculate to be of some flu-type variety, and, man, did it knock me out.

Did I mention that FireDad was working his normal 24 hour shift on Saturday?

Have you ever tried to parent from the couch or the bed? I have before, having been placed on Level III bedrest while pregnant with LittleBrother. BigBrother was not-quite-two during those ten long weeks of my life. To be honest, I wasn’t all that great at bedrest. It was hard to be good at it when the not-quite-two year old needed to do things like, oh, eat on days that FireDad was off doing his duty. Still, I did my best. My best then, while hugely pregnant with a malfunctioning kidney, was a million and one times better than what I had to offer two children, not-quite-two and not-quite-four, this past weekend. We seem to have survived. I think.

I am thankful that they are quite adept at amusing themselves and one another. It would have been a smidgen more awesome if BigBrother had napped considering that he was sick as well (read: whiny) but you take the good with the bad. Or, really, the bad with the bad. He did not attend preschool today though I did manage to drink enough cold medicine to make it through my first day of work. I did, however, forget to take my own camera to my first day of work… as a photographer. Medicine head fail. (That said, I will be getting a swanky Nikon for the newspaper. Hooray!)

I must admit that this illness did me one fabulous thing. How can an illness give you anything fabulous? Since I was so sick and so preoccupied with being sick, I didn’t have time to be nervous about today’s first trip into work. Or leaving my kids (with their father, mind you). Or any of that normal anxiety that creeps into my psyche on the eve of any big life change. In fact, I wasn’t all that nervous this morning. You know, when I was busy leaving my camera behind. Maybe I could have stood to be a slight bit more nervous, no?

We’re all on the mend. I can’t tell if LittleBrother is getting our cough or not. BigBrother’s temperature did spike to 104.3 on Friday night but came down immediately after a dose of ibuprofen and never went back over 101 after that initial spike. We were afraid, as we usually are when it comes to his health, that he would lose the ability to breathe properly. So far, knock on wood, he has not. His cough is mostly dry and scratchy now, like mine. I had some pretty nasty junk going on in my chest for most of the weekend. As the flu, whatever the variety, is a manageable illness as long you are a healthy individual who pays attention to your symptoms or your kids’ symptoms, we didn’t take a trip to the doctor’s office. I won’t be able to tell you if this was “the” flu that everyone is freaking out about unless we end up with the letters-and-numbers virus at a later date in time. (Like any flu virus, you can only get it once (per strain, per year). That means we can still get that “scary” flu if we haven’t yet or another strain such as the normal seasonal flu.) Whatever the case, we are feeling much better. Glad to be on the mend and looking forward to a busy November.

But, please, could you wash your hands? And teach your children not to cough on my children? As much as I can handle the flu, my poor little nose is tired of tissues, however soft and lotion-laden they claim to be.