Stick a fork in me

'cause I am done. As I mentioned in my previous post, Kiddo appeared to be starting with a head cold yesterday morning.   Well, yesterday afternoon she returned home from school white as a sheet with a low grade fever (99.2) and generally looked pitiful, so we skipped her swimming lesson and I put her to bed early with a dose of Children's Mucinex Cold for good measure.

Now, since it isn't possible for my kid to ever catch anything besides strep throat (to which I seem *knock wood* to be mostly immune) without me catching it too, of course I started with the cold symptoms myself.  I can actually tell you the exact moment they began.  I was pushing my shopping cart out of Walmart to my car through the chilly, damp air yesterday afternoon (temperatures were back down into the 30s and I was forced to reluctantly pull my winter coat back out of the closet where I'd optimistically stashed it the previous week) and I breathed in.  With that inhalation (around 2:20pm), my throat began to hurt.  At first I chalked it up to the air, to being thirsty, to *anything* other than germs.  I hopped in the car and chugged a bottle of water.  Throat still hurt.  Dang.  I chose to ignore it and went on with my day, because really, it's not like I actually had a choice.  The world does not stop because Mommy is suddenly feeling unwell, after all. I drove myself home, unpacked the groceries, herded Kiddo into the house when the school bus arrived, tended to her, etc.

By the time she was tucked into bed - 6:50pm despite DST, so I knew she wasn't feeling well - I was listless and sneezy.  I still tried to convince myself that it was nothing more than PMS.  Because PMS gives you a runny nose and sore throat, right?  Hubby got home around 8:30 and we had cold cereal and toast for dinner, then went to bed at 10, and as soon as I rolled onto my side and shut my eyes, I felt it.  That inside-the-skull sloshing of all the snot that seemingly spontaneously generated and ran down into my left side sinuses and nostril as they snuggled into the pillow.  Ugh.  I rolled to the other side and felt the sensation repeat as the tide shifted to my right.  Not.  Good.

As the night progressed, I tossed and turned and woke up to alternatively jam Puffs Pluses into my nostrils or to remove and replace them.  (What?  You've never done that?  I do it all. the. time. when I have a head cold.  I'm doing it right now, as a matter of fact.)  Around 2am, Hubby abandoned ship and moved himself into the guest room to try to get some sleep that wasn't interrupted by my congested breathing, snorting or snoring.  I took advantage of his defection by rolling onto my back so that at least the congestion could reach a state of equilibrium between my sinuses.  As generally happens when I'm not feeling well, my subconscious went all Twilight Zone on me and kept parading odd and unsettling dreams through my increasingly congested noggin for the periods I was actually asleep.

This morning, Kiddo didn't wake up until 8:35.  I would gladly have slept in even longer if I could've, myself.  Instead, I got up, swapped my normal morning attire of ratty sweatshirt-over-jammies for my ratty-fleece-with-pockets-over-jammies so that I can carry a stash of tissues and hand sanitizer with me wherever I go and shuffled downstairs.  Kiddo is home from school today (obviously) and we're both pretty pathetic.  My sinus headache is throbbing to the beat of the opening chords of Eye of the Tiger thanks to her iPod.  I'm presently debating whether to turn on the Wii for her and let her play Littlest Pet Shop so I can go back to bed.  (We have a rule: Kiddo is only allowed to play Wii on the weekends.)  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm totally turning it on for her as soon as she finishes her breakfast and comes back downstairs. 

The end-of-winter cold is unfortunately a bit of a tradition around our house, and one I would gladly skip.  It's supposed to be gorgeous out today, Hubby told me this morning as he was getting ready for work.  Sunshine and temps in the 50s.  I'd planned to do some yardwork (there are enough sticks in our yard for me to build a bonfire) and I was supposed to be volunteering at school this afternoon on a big art project the first graders are finishing up, but instead I'm going to pull down the shades and retreat to my Mentholated Rainforest Cave. And did I mention on top of this cold, I also have *every* possible PMS symptom right now, too? 

Pathetic.  Totally pathetic.