On the Mend…

…At least, I hope so. Being ill is never much fun. Especially when one’s workmates can’t live without one. One drags oneself to the computer (damn and blast the e-mail!) and thinks with a few keystrokes the duty will be done. But no, there is more to say and do, and one finds oneself chained to the computer at home, as if in one’s very office! And one hacks and snuffles one’s way through the day, unable to take one’s medicine which would put one blissfully to sleep or at least stop the postnasal drip, because one must needs get on with helping the poor folk in the office. One feels guilty for having had the nerve to become ill, for having had the bad grace to take in the wrong germs and catch cold, and one gets the distinct feeling that one’s officemates think one is shirking one’s duty by not making one’s appearance in the workplace.

Alas! It is all true — I have been ill, I have been working from home, I have not been shirking much, and I have been coughing and sneezing all over my keyboard. Alas for my children, who have now suffered at least three nights of freezer food — French fries! Chicken patties! Frozen burritos! My mother has driven my children to school. My children have done my chores. Only the cat has fared well, having had me to sleep upon instead of the cold armchair. And the Kleenex company, they have done well, as I shred my way through my third box of tissues in as many days.

Illness does not do the body any good. One sees oneself in the mirror and thinks, ick. What a tired old sack I have become in just three days. But there is hope, because the sinuses begin to drain and the sniffles begin to subside, and I should be well in time for the weekend, or at the latest, Monday, when another jolly round of newspaper awaits me at the office.

Can’t help but be grateful when health returns. I’m hoping in the next few days — if I feel up to it — to organize my office at long last, and to get going on a number of tasks. I hope to get started on some bigger writing projects — some chapters for the memoir that this blog is purported to become. Ah, well, we shall see.

Note to Aspiring Writers and anyone who has a cold: Read lots of good books while you can. The real world intrudes again soon enough.

Facebook Conversations

comments