Sole survivor

I was pretty sick the whole first week of January. However, that was nothing compared to Chad, who came down with what was likely the same thing around January 7th-8th and only seemed to get better by the middle of last week. He had one or two days of near-normalcy and then on Friday, came home from work sicker than ever. He went straight to bed and I think I only saw him come out of our room for food twice before Sunday night. He actually made a trip to see a doctor and is now on pills and a spray and goodness knows what else.

So... including Friday, when I was home with the kids on a scheduled day off, I spent three solid days cooking, cleaning, serving and cleaning up after meals, playing Candy Land and xBox, doing a week's worth of laundry, shovelling seven inches of unexpected snow (I only got half the driveway done before I ran out of steam on this one), grocery shopping, giving baths and reading stories - you get the picture.

On top of that - prepare for some horn tooting, here - on account of the fact that I was home with the kids all day and unable to get out for my much-needed long run - race day is fast approaching, and I have lost a lot of time to sickness and bad weather already this winter - I actually put the kids to bed on Saturday night and then spent two hours on the treadmill, getting off right in time to watch Saturday Night Live. Let me tell you, this was an accomplishment the likes of which I have never seen before. Two hours on a treadmill is more an exercise in mental toughness than physical toughness, and I was pretty proud of myself for sticking it out. In case you couldn't tell.

(Of course, it was the following morning that we headed out to shovel, and my poor body cried uncle.)

By yesterday afternoon, I was freaking exhausted. And the kids were lethargic and snuffly too, and sure enough this morning we woke up and both Liam and Mallory are fevered and runny-nosed, and we are currently all three sitting on the couch, watching Despicable Me and trying to calculate how much linepack we need to get us through the deep freeze coming this week. (Given that Jan and Feb are really my peak work months, it kind of sucks that that's when cold and flu season hits, too. Just sayin'.)

So my return to work today, which I was almost looking forward to as a bit of a break from these past few days, has instead morphed into a combination of caring for sick children AND trying to fit in a full day's work. Funny how that happens, no??

So far, I am the sole survivor in this household - the lone healthy person. Though, given the amount of time I have spent around sick people lately, I really don't know how much longer I will last.