Pestilence

I like fantasy books that things like death, chance, lust and pestilence an anthropomorphic personification. I like the idea that there is some sort of being personally responsible for some of the day to day crap we go through. It gives you someone to shake your fist at. (As in "you darn kids stay off my lawn.")

I thumb my nose at all of them today. I was suppose to have a rather laid back week of sleeping till the wee hours, reading, scratching, perusing adult material on the internet and of course the video crack known as World of Warcraft. Instead I get Typhoid Baby.

So let me set the seen. I'm already a couple days into this do nothing week so by the time these events take place, my sleep schedule is already pushed back to five thirty in the am. I am just laying down nearing sleepy land when the phone starts ringing.

There is nothing more terrifying than a phone that is wringing at an odd hour. I start thinking "Oh my god! Something happened to mom while she was on vacation." I miss the phone before the service picks it up, but seconds later it starts ringing again. It is my brother ... This could be worse something could have happened to baby girl (tragedies are magnified exponentially in regards to the age of the persons involved).

There is no crisis. My sister in law has a stomach bug and is having all the stomach bug symptoms, could I watch baby girl that morning. I want to say no. I am desperate to say no. I haven't slept. I cant be alert enough to watch the wild one for an entire work day all by myself. This house isn't really set up for me to baby sit by myself. I have to say yes. There is no one else to do it.

So me and baby girl made it through our day all right. Much public television was on in the background as we colored, played blocks chased Mollys (aka cats)read books and did just about everything there is to do in this house short of take a nap.

Her father fetched her that evening. I collapsed into my computer chair where I proceeded to kill virtual monsters for a few hours before crawling up to bed.

The next morning I woke up with an acid stomach. By five in the evening my body had purged itself of all food and beverage. I was hot. I was cold. I napped on and off till midnight curled up in a bundle of blankets on the fouton closest to the bathroom. The fever broke may have broke but then the full body ache settled in.

The body has a way of contorting itself in an almost fetal way when sick. You pay for it later on when those muscles finally relax from being tensed so long. I'm still sore.

Through all of this baby girl has been fine. Both her parents succumbed. She was all smiles and playtime.

I think the next time my parents plan to leave town, I will make plans to be gone for the same period. Though that might be tempting fate, the pestilence anthropomorphic personification might see fit to strike me sick away from home.

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