You know why you feel so lousy?

'Cause you have pneumonia, that's why. Get off the darn internet and take your pills.

How do you argue with "you SOUND better"

Slept half the night on Hubby's recliner, hoping that the seated position would help. Didn't. Woke up this morning, took an old antibiotic I found in my desk. Immediately regretted it as reckless self-medication.

Blood sugar normal, this morning, and I haven't gained any of the weight I've lost, but I still feel genuinely icky. Hubby all but insisted, before he left for work, that I go to an actual doctor and get fixed. Which I shall do, today, because I feel like death on toast. Really stale, soggy toast. Death is hating the itchy toast.

So Mom called today, wanting to know when we can come up for anniversary/birthday dinner. I suggested it might be a couple of weeks, because I still feel really sick and Hubby is also sick, now. But, to Mom, I SOUND better, over the phone.

I have to hook her up with all the people who see me in real life and tell me I need to get back in bed. Honest! I am sick. Not pretending, not weaseling out of dinner with my parents, just actually sick as a sick dog, and maybe slightly sicker than that.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

The whole family has been coughing, off and on, for more than a month. We do this every winter, no matter how much vitamin C and exercise and constant humidification we attempt. It's just part of winter.

Except, this time, I got hit HARD. I have been coughing pretty much non-stop, since Friday. Exhausted. Whiney. Cough-til-you-gag-and-your-ribs-ache. At certain parts of the day, my hands puff up. When they go down, my stomach bloats until I can't zip my pants...and then that resolves itself, too, with, um, unpleasant results. I'm hot. I'm cold. I can't breathe. I've gotta lie down. I'm just waiting to choke on my own vomit. On Saturday, I even managed a Cinderella-like hallucination.

Finally, here it is Tuesday, and I am on the mend. Surely not functional, but at least I can see it around the corner. So, naturally, Hubby had the cough of death this morning. Perhaps in part because he has been working like a dog AND running the house while I recouperate--even hosting a birthday sleepover for Son #3, who is, he says, "Twerve".

God help us all.

Pugs: Pain in the butt, or just universally odd?

I am relieved, I guess, to see that other people's pugs are just as mental as my own.

I'm for it, if it cuts both ways

Miss a parent-teacher meeting? This guy says parents should be charged with a crime, and fined.

I'm only recently back in the school system, but when we were sending all the Sons to school, I never missed a meeting with school staff. Got stood up quite a bit, though. It was a big factor in our leaving the public school system in the first place--just couldn't get teachers to meet with us about what to do with our son. If teachers were charged with the same crime for skipping a meeting, I think I could stand behind it.

It's easy to say parents are not good enough. Every parent knows they're not good enough. But holding teachers accountable? Ain't never gonna happen.