THOMnottom

No, I’m not talking about that crappy horror remake (and yes, the trailer and cover art basically “ruin” the last 15 minutes), I’m talking about my own quarantine. Some sort of flu-type thing has invaded my body and knocked me on my proverbial and real asses. Yesterday afternoon there was hope that it was one of those 24 hour things, but the evening revealed that to be unlikely. Now it’s day 2 of being trapped in the bedroom.

I don’t know about you, but sick days were a lot more fun when I was a kid. Maybe that’s because there was a lot more faking involved, but even the real sick days were typically spent curled up on couch watching too much TV while my Mom took care of me. To some extent this is still a similar experience, albeit with The Woman playing the role of my Mom, but as stupid things like adulthood and maturity get in the way a certain amount of guilt creeps in.

Only a couple years ago colds and flus didn’t really bother me. Lay down, rest, drink lots of water… whatever. Now there’s this whole little person running around that house that strikes fear into my heart at the thought of getting her sick, too. While previous illnesses often didn’t result in any form of quarantine, now we’re all sleeping separately to avoid becoming one of those households in which everyone just keeps exchanging different germs. On the one hand this means I can’t help out at a time when Kayleigh seems to be going through some major separation anxiety crap and on the other hand… I miss her.

It may seem silly, but walking down the stairs and seeing her so excited to see me yet not being able to pick her up nearly broke my heart. And I can only imagine the havoc that two straight weeks of nonstop Daddy-time followed by two days of zero interaction is playing with her. Back when I was a kid, stretching sick days out for as long as possible was awesome. Now I think another day of this will drive me (and the rest of the family) bonkers. Who knows, maybe this thing is finally clearing up in time to be labeled a “48-hour bug”. Or maybe that’s just the drugs kicking in…

After a month of heavy posting I shut up and then leave some stupid tweet about having a really bad day… pretty crappy, eh? Not to make any excuses, but it comes down to this: layoffs suck. They suck a lot less when you’re not on the receiving end, but they still suck. And when you run the IT portion and get stuck doing some of the dirty work well… you can guess.

Just in time for pundits to start declaring “the recession is over” my company downsized for the first time in its 25+ year history. Obviously I couldn’t mention any of this before it happened because… duh. Once the deed was done and the press release hit the wire I still needed some time to gather myself. My office hidden in the deep back corner of a half empty building only shields me so much.

It’s not like I’m going to discuss specifics about my job anyway, but know that everything hit like a ton of bricks just when things seemed like they had turned a corner. The stress resulted in at least half a dozen gray hairs popping up in my winter beard which has since been trimmed down to disguise them and may disappear completely. It also beat down my immune system enough for a cold to grab a hold of my head. Fortunately the rest of the household remained unaffected while I took up residency on the back couch and passed out by 9 every night.

For now my head is buried in the sand far enough that things seem to be back to normal. In all seriousness there’s nothing here for concern beyond the need to tighten our belts a little “just in case”. Maybe I’m just an eternal optimist, but things have a way of working themselves out for me.