How to Use All Your Sick Days Before Thanksgiving in Just One Easy Step

1. Work at a middle school.

On Saturday I woke up with a sharp pain in my lower back. Yikes. When I rolled cautiously out of bed I proceeded to cough repeatedly, my chest burning and my throat releasing a full night's sleep worth of some kind of nasty. Awesome. The weekend was a little rough. I took a good deal of Motrin, to no effect, and tried to not pass out when I stood up. I also coughed a lot. But no fever, no other symptoms...whew. No swine flu for this mama. (This should be said sarcastically...I might be the last holdout from Swine Flu Fear; I refuse to have panic attacks about THE FLU. Does it suck? I'm sure. Any worse than the regular flu? I'm going to say no.)

So I went to work yesterday, all loaded up on Motrin, because while I was in a good deal of pain and not feeling good, I knew that neither a chest cold nor a back strain was something a doctor could do anything about, and the only cure was time. So off to work I went. Somewhere around 2nd period my face started slowly catching on fire. I stood up to get something and I got the chills. It kept getting worse. I decided that during recess I would take my temp in the nurse's office to see if I had a fever. If so, I would take some more Motrin and move on with my life. The nurse took my temperature (which I thought was silly, since I was a grown up and perfectly capable of doing it myself...but I guess there's some kind of rule or whatever). My temp was 99.6, which isn't really a fever, but I guess after Motrin it kind of is. So I was ready to ask her for some more Motrin when she told me I had to go home. I needed to go to my room, call the sub lady, gather my things, and go home when my sub got there. Completely shocked, I told her that while I didn't feel great I felt fine enough to finish the day. But she said that anyone with a fever was required to go home. I assured her, to no avail, that I didn't have the flu, swine or otherwise. Needless to say, I did as I was told. I picked Ben up from Molly's and went home. Upon returning home, it was clear the Motrin had worn off because my temp was 102.6. Okay, fair enough. I was sick. So I spent two hours entertaining the wildebeest from the couch until he went down for his nap and Matt came home. I went to the doctor at 4:00 to find, as suspected, that I had a nasty chest virus (although, to be fair, I have asthma and I'm supposed to keep a close eye on lung stuff) and a strained back. I was sent home with a new inhaler, prescription Motrin, and muscle relaxers.

I have the most amazing husband in the world, who took good care of Ben and me for the evening. My fever finally broke around 8:00pm, and it hasn't come back. I had already gotten a sub for today, and my mom is coming later to take Ben out for a while so I can rest. But then I got a call from my school saying that the district says I can't come back to work until I've been fever free without fever reducers for at least 48 hours. Which means I will be out tomorrow as well. Which means as of Thursday I will have officially used half of my allotted sick days. And the cold and flu season has hardly even started. 120 kids from my school were out yesterday, which is 20% of the students. Sheesh.

So I will be spending the next two days on the couch doped up on Motrin and muscle relaxers, reading my boring book, Louise de la Valliere (I have to finish it, though, because it's book three in the series, and book four, The Man in the Iron Mask, is really good), and calling to my toddler to stop trying to unplug the light and stick his fingers in the fan. Yes, the fan. Did I not mention that it's supposed to be 85 degrees all week? Doesn't soup and hot tea sound so good when it's summer?

NEVER be a teacher.