Happy New Year!!! I was waiting to stop coughing and then I’d write a blog post, but I may never stop coughing.

I know I’m in the good company of many, many other sick people. There were over a hundred kids absent from BB’s school two weeks ago, so we didn’t stand a chance.

Or maybe we did, but our chances weren’t good and we did NOT luck out.

We’re three weeks out from whatever mucus-laden virus this is. BB went down first and recovered quickly. Although she’s still coughing.

RB went next. Then me. Then our house guest.

Our house guest had a simple choice: Hanukkah with the kids and a lot of snot, or a kid and mucus-free Hanukkah. She picked snot.

RB has wiped her nose so aggressively, for so long, that her upper lip is bleeding and there are smears of blood appearing everywhere she likes to wipe her nose: clothes, lovies, furniture, the wall.

On the 23rd, at RB’s school’s Hanukkah party, someone told me,

“Just a warning, Strep is going around.”

I said a small prayer. And if proximity has anything to do with that working, I WAS in the synagogue. I didn’t say much else considering whatever virus we had, had caused me to lose my voice.

Christmas eve, my throat started to feel worse. The last night of Hanukkah/Christmas day, my throat felt even worse, but going to the doctor was low on my to-do list.

The day after Christmas, I couldn’t get there fast enough. Strep. The test came back positive, but the doctor was so confident just by looking at the state of my throat that I walked out of there with a prescription and ran straight into a fellow school family at CVS. Instead of hello, I offer,

“Strep?”

“How’d you know?!? Is it that obvious?”

“No, it’s going around school. RB says hi!”

I say another small prayer: ‘Please don’t let my children get this.’ I can’t get RB to take Tylenol. A 10-day course of antibiotics would be a curse.

As four of us round the corner on week three of being ill, Captain has never been healthier. This is wonderful. No kiddo bedtimes for me, but also I couldn’t be more envious.

For years I have been happy to lord over him my strong immune system. It seems he falls prey to whatever virus might be wafting by.

I spent a month in India eating whatever street food I stumbled upon and enjoyed myself with a very manageable amount of diarrhea.

I spent four years behind the bar, eating strangers’ leftovers, with no more than a few sniffles.

I spent the last ten years with Captain, feeling bad for his stuffed up nose, but not so bad that I didn’t enjoy every ounce of my congestion free life.

I am now in week three of the most mucus I’ve ever produced in my life. There feels like there’s some lesson to be learned here.

Maybe it’s to avoid small children. I’ll let you know how that goes.