weekend in jammies

My good intentions for cleaning the house over the weekend floated away bit by bit Friday as weariness and dizziness descended. Fighting the cobwebs of sleep pulling my eyelids shut, I drove home very slowly that afternoon. I pulled on a warm housecoat and slumped into bed.
When my husband returned from his four-day business trip. I greet him with a faint, “I don’t feel well. I hurt all over. I just want to sleep.”
Saturday, I wished the girls well on their planned day of shopping, glanced at the paper and fell back into bed.
My husband took a brisk morning walk and returned to announce, “the neighbors are having a garage sale. I told them, if you weren’t so sick you would have come to their garage sales.”
“Where is it?”
“About two, three houses down on the other side of the street.”
For a whole minute I thought about going. I thought about getting dressed. I thought about taking off my warm slipper socks and putting on a cold pair of shoes. I dropped back into bed and fell asleep.
Food for the weekend was reduced to toast, crackers, chicken bullion cubes in hot water, fruit juices and my favorite quick vegetable soup: Brown ground meat with onion and salt, add cans of vegetables, tomato sauce, potatoes and water let it stew. Too weary to peel potatoes, I broke a couple handfuls of generic brand frozen French fries into the soup. Tasted just fine to me.
After my husband told me how much weight he gained while away, I said, “I guess a weekend of vegetable soup is good for you.” He didn’t agree very loudly, but he did eat the stuff.
Ahh! what a weekend, I drank tepid bullion, nibbled on healthy vegetable soup, watched the opening credits to inane movies and slept on the couch.”
I think my husband realized I was really sick when I didn’t even think about getting dressed. Not on Saturday. Not on Sunday.
All weekend I stayed in my jammies, skipped the weekend garage sales, grocery shopping, Sunday morning church and evening services. I even missed a meeting I had called of parents of seniors. Through it all I stayed home, coughed, dozed, took medicine and sipped soup.
By Monday morning the fog in my brain had cleared enough for me to stand up and remain alert. I set off to work ready to tell the tale of my weekend of illness. I was ready to collect my nobility points for showing up while still recuperating from being flat out sick.
I had time to corner two people at the News-Times with the tale of my weekend of sickness at home. Then the rest of the crew came dragging in. Pale faced, weak-voiced, one by one they joined the ranks of the walking, working sick. “My fever was over 100.” “I got medicine …” “I was in bed all weekend.”
We formed hacking, sneezing and coughing chorus.
Each morning we discretely eyeball each other for signs of improvement in the sick or signs of weakness in the healthy few, watching, waiting for the bug to eat up their weekend.