i a too old to have the flu, happy new year and other thoughts on not having blogged for weeks

for those of you loyal readers who may have noticed i have been missing from the blogging ranks these past few weeks - i am back! first off, i would like to thank my sister in all things blogging for not only holding up her end but mine as well while i lay languishing in my sick bed. sybil is not only bright and funny but a true trooper.

now back to me. i had the stomach flu. temperature, vomiting, runs, the whole nine yards. i remember when being sick was the best thing that could happen. it meant days off from school and unlimited mommy time. snuggled deep into my parent's big bed with a thousand pillows to prop up my fevered brow i was waited on and cosseted. homemade chicken soup was lovingly spooned into my mouth when i was too weak to eat and hours drifted by while my mother read to me from "stuart little". "charlotte's web" or "nancy drew" depending on my age at the time.
every few hours my mother would take a cool damp wash cloth and wipe down my face and hands helping to cool the fever. every time i got up from bed i would return to the sheets freshly smoothed and the pillows fluffed.

fast forward to today. while the husband truly did do his best to take care of me, he is not, let's face it, my mother. his soups were delicious, the little i could manage to eat. no spoon feeding here. and while there was no reading aloud to me there was plenty of football to hear as a background to my delirium. at one point, when i asked why he was watching football in the sick room he said "to keep you company". it was so sweet but so wrong. for days i lay in fever soaked sheets with pillows flattened into pancakes. no fluffing going on and the one time he attempted to cool me down with a wet washcloth i ended up having to change both my soaked nightgown as well as the sheets.

so the two things i have learned going into 2008 are, yes, i am too old to have the flu and the husband is not my mother. does this knowledge make me wiser, better equipped to start a new year or possibly become a more empathetic person? doubtful, but there is one thing i have learned from this whole experience - next year i am getting a flu shot!