Sicko

Our city is in the throes of a nasty trio of disease: the flu, an upper respiratory thingy, and a stomach virus.

Sport had the stomach virus yesterday. He threw up all morning and was as weak as a kitten for the rest of the day. But this morning he hopped out of bed without being prodded eight different times. "I'm just happy to be alive!"

Our best pals were laid out by sickness and walking pneumonia for more than a week. I got a call from one friend who said her husband was sick -- again. Another friend emailed with a hilarious account of his illness:

"...a combination of the flu and a lack of will to live that may or may not have been related. I choose to think they were because when I was in the depths of the illness I wanted to be neither asleep nor awake and was uncomfortable in whatever position I found myself. It was truly an existential crisis."

I work in a library. SO works at the airport. We are both exposed to the general public every day. We live in dread of exposure, which has led to the development of an OCD-like obsession with handwashing. If I could get away with it, I'd wear a face mask or even an epidemiology body suit like they get at the CDC.

Oh yeah, remember the roof repair? Well, the torrential rain we got on Saturday opened up a leak and took out a patch of ceiling in our department. Three computers were destroyed. We are now dealing with a nasty stink and a roof that has yet to be fixed. When I come to work, I get nauseous. But no one will remove the carpet until the leak is fixed. When will that be? I don't know.

Ahhh, bureaucracy.