Sick of winter

Well, it’s been a week.

Kates had a professional development day Monday, so the girls didn’t have school and I stayed home with them. But she came home early that afternoon because she wasn’t feeling well. She promptly crawled into bed and wasn’t the same the rest of the week.

Without an official diagnosis, the only reasonable conclusion is she caught the flu. Besides feeling achy and lacking any energy whatsoever, she had a terrible cough and her nose was running off her face.

After missing school Tuesday and Wednesday, she tried to return to school on Thursday for a half day but regretted that and took another full day on Friday. Today, we chose to sleep in and skip church, and it’s only this morning that she’s showing signs of getting back to normal.

Fortunately, the rest of us have been spared. All of us got our flu shots last fall, but Kates still caught it. It’s been a scary flu season with dozens of children dying, and I’m grateful it wasn’t worse for us.

But it sure felt like I was running our house as a single parent this past week. I took the girls to school every morning except for Thursday, and I picked them up from school every night – enjoying their babbling and elementary school gossip from the backseat throughout the ride. I took them to Subway for lunch on Monday, to Sonic for supper on Tuesday and to Kentucky Fried Chicken for supper on Thursday – because Daddy doesn’t cook.

Our church hosts a community dinner on Wednesday nights before their youth activities – to which Kates usually takes the girls while I stay in my office and work, but I took them this week. The night’s meal was chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and vegetables, and it was delicious.

I also took both girls to their gymnastic classes on Monday night and Phoebe to her guitar lesson on Thursday. And in between I was trying to navigate my work week, doing whatever cleaning needed to be done around the house, making sure the girls were bathed and in bed at a decent time. And sleeping on the couch to avoid inheriting the bug from Kates.

It doesn't help, either, that the weather is frigid. Yesterday, the high temperature topped out around 10 degrees and we got another couple inches of snow.

Is it spring yet?