Gloom, despair, and agony on me.

Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember watching "Hee Haw" with your family? That Buck Owens could really play the banjo.

Well, the flu is officially no longer funny. I have lost another 2 pounds, and have written the tag line for my next advertising spot:

SIX pounds in SIX days. The flu! Just like Weight Watchers, only sicker.

Eat your heart out Peggy Olsen.

So I am a little bit better. But see, that's what I've been thinking since around Tuesday afternoon. And then I'll get ambitious and move the pile of dishes in the sink actually into the dishwasher, maybe start a load of clothes, and then BAM, I realize I feel horrible again and I'll take my temperature and it's back up to 102. The kids seemed to fully recover on Tuesday, then on Wednesday they had fevers again and these horrible coughs that sound like Gatlin guns.

Then the toaster stopped working, and I wondered if we weren't experiencing The Seven Plagues: 21st Century Edition.

 Then I was taking trash out into the garage and there was a smell (and my smeller is working at about 5%, which means it was a SMELL). I then remembered the tortoise shell. The Wednesday Just Before The Time of Flu, we had a big adventure, which I will fully describe at some point, because it was a doozy. Anyway, Hudson found a good-sized tortoise shell (about 8 inches long, probably) on this adventure, and he picked it up and carried it on a stick back to the car (and by "back to the car" I mean almost 2 hours later; hence the adventure). Anyway, I realized when we got back to the car that the tortoise shell still had a few bits of decaying tortoise in it, so I stuck it in a gallon Ziplock bag and made sure to take it out of the car when we got home. I put it on a box behind the trash can, fully intending to deal with it in some way in the next couple of days. Then The Time of Flu happened and you can imagine that googling ways to rid tortoise shells of bits of tortoise carcass wasn't really at the top of my list. So a week went by.

 Let's go ahead and number the plagues:
 1. The Plague of The Flu
2. The Plague of the Broken Toaster
3. The Plague of the Smell of Bits of Tortoise Carcass Encased in Plastic for One Week

 I actually spent some of my precious moments of energy dousing the thing with a hose, spraying it with 70% isopropyl, and sticking it atop one of the huge anthills in our backyards where I'm hoping the ants will dispense of the offending bits. I did not google this method. It is the clear genius of Flu Brain.

Speaking of  "Hee Haw", during one of my middle of the night restless fugue states, I was thinking about shows like "Hee Haw" and "The Mandrell Sisters" and "Donny and Marie" and how my whole family would watch them together on our one small television. Things have changed in 30 years.  We do still only have one television in our house, which made me feel a little better. Also, we got rid of our cable last week, which means the only way we can watch it at all is to use an antennae which gets us 4 channels that do this disintegrating screen thing every couple of minutes unless the bunny ears are exactly right. I tried to watch "Downton Abbey" on Sunday night for about 10 minutes, and gave up after an entire conversation between Matthew and Lord Grantham got disintegrated. I just watched for free on PBS.org the next day.

This is a sick kid version of a tent:

 
I woke up at 5 this morning and went to go check on the kids. I discovered Hudson curled up on the bathmat. He was on fire. So I gave him Advil and the husband put him back in bed. Then I went back to bed and woke up with a splitting headache, soaked in sweat, and feverish 2 hours later. Both of these episodes ensured we wouldn't be attending our homeschool co-op today. I did have to go and drop off some things for the science experiment, so I decided I would take these Dayquil gel capsules to give me some relief for the drive in. I have a problem with large pills (my esophagus, it spasms) (my OB has to prescribe chewable prenatal vitamins for me) and I knew this, but decided to try it anyway. Which leads us to our final Plague of the Day:

4. The Plague of the Esophageal Spasm, the Enormous Capsule, and the Orange Juice

Helena was sitting at the table eating a biscuit when this spectacle was taking place and she kept asking, "Mommy, are you frowing up? Mommy are you frowing up in the sink? Mommy that is a funny noise your froat is making! What is that noise?"

To end this tome, I must say that the husband has been heroic all week. He's been sick too, but he has managed to get up very early to work his regular job AND finish a huge extra project AND clean the kitchen from top to bottom three separate times while insisting I rest. That's love.