"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now"

Before we had Connor I'd been repeatedly warned that kids were diesease-carrying filth mongers. "They'll make you sick," 'they' told me; "You'll have a permanent sniffle," 'they' said; "Your washer and dryer will be constantly running," 'they cautioned; "You'll be dead broke," 'they' predicted. (The latter of which has nothing to do with sickness, it was just repeated to me often by proponents of childless marriages.)

Despite the wealth of expert opinions on the subject, I was clearly unprepared for the onslaught of germs that comes part-and-parcel with sharing a living space with a slobbery, drooling, snot-dripping maniac of a kid. With such an unsavory description, though, how could anyone not know that little kids are perpetual germ factories?

This past weekend Stacey took Connor to see a friend of hers who has a little boy close to Connor's age. In addition to the fresh tomatoes and dirty laundry that they brought back with them yesterday, Connor also returned with a head cold.

Translation? I now have a head cold.

I've probably been sick more times this year since I started staying home with Connor, than during all of my previous 29 years combined, and it's really beginning to grate on my nerves.

I'm starting to feel like a little old lady who seems to always have some new affliction, hunched over from the constant muscle fatigue earned from playing with someone four feet shorter than me, carrying around a pocketful of Kleenex and coughing at the most inopportune moments.

Still, I suppose things could be worse.

I could be at...gulp...WORK!