This afternoon, I took (gasp) a few hours of “sick time.”
This is ridiculous. Ludicrous. Unheard of. I work from home! I don’t need sick time! I can prop myself up on my couch with a laptop and a jug of vitamin C and just keep typing. Damn the viruses, full (or at least one quarter) speed ahead!
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even like taking sick time when I worked from work. Once, a few years ago, after being felled by a nasty case of influenza, I got dressed on Day 3, and made it all the way to the door, only to wake up several hours later, curled up on the rug in the foyer. I think I thought I’d “sit down for just a minute,” and well…
All this is to say, sick time and I are not friends.
Yet, today, as the 4pm meeting loomed, I realized that my typing was making very little sense. The hull had been breached. The ship was listing dangerously to one side, and the virus torpedo loomed suddenly very large.
How much less sense would I make trying to speak to colleagues about complicated concepts? How quickly would I sink in infamy? It was hard to say but not worth the risk. I put in for three hours of (ridiculous and ludicrous!) sick time. Later, I woke up, vaguely remembering eating something called Senate Bean Soup for lunch and telling Don I enjoyed it.
Don is another matter. He too has fallen. “I took a sick day,” he announced wearily this morning before disappearing to bed. I take it he roused himself to make (?) warm (?) conjure (?) the senator’s soup, but beyond that I know little.
Thus, given the current warp and weft of our days, there is not much to report. Outside, the snow has piled up in glorious drifts which I have yet to touch. Inside, Pete and Joe are growing increasingly restless, Joe regularly initiating his favorite game of “Kill Pete” and Pete responding by alternately leaping wildly into the air and burying himself under every available blanket.
The cats seem unfazed, but I caught George conferring through the screen door with a member of the neighborhood feline gang, and I worry plots may be afoot.
But never fear! I will foil them. Because I have decided that “sick time” is over. Enough is enough. Mind over matter! When the going gets tough the tough gets going!
Tomorrow, I shall be well! I shall rise up and…um…you know, hang on. I think I need to sit down for just a…not long…just a minute.
See everyone soon!
But if not, maybe give the Coast Guard a ring? We might need some life boats over here.
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