Sick

There is only one thing that I can think of that I love more than my family, and that would be God.  He is good, all the time.

My family is good too and I desire to be around them as much as possible... except when one or more of us are sick.  We are a relatively healthy family, but honestly, with young boys, there is no real confusion as to why one or more of us gets sick from time to time.

Boys, after all are just plain gross.  I don't want to embarrass any of my children too much, so I won't tell you which one, but the other day I was taking Noble -- oops -- oh well -- to football practice.  He was wiping something off of his shorts.  He was working at it fairly diligently.  I asked him what he was doing.  His response was fairly matter-of-fact, "wiping peanut butter off of my pants."  I had been with him most of the day, and I do not remember him eating peanut butter, so I asked, "when did you have peanut butter?"  He smiled and looked up thoughtfully and responded, "I cannot think of the last time I had peanut butter."  The disconcerting part for me was not so much that he had peanut butter on his pants, or that those pants were "clean", or even that this phantom peanut butter had been there for an indeterminate amount of time, but that it seemed normal, common-place, unexceptional, as if this sort of thing happens to everyone.  Just today at dinner, the other one was removing the inside of his roll and squeezing it onto a ball.  They love the inside of the roll.  He was making a ball and compacting it dense with his hands, nearly incorporating his bandage into the newly formed ball as it came off of his finger.  I removed the bandage and tossed it into the garbage asking. "when was the last time you washed your hands?"  The response, "I don't remember."

So, is it any wonder that one of us gets sick from time to time?

About two weeks ago, one of them caught the "crud".  I think it was actually the daughter.  There was hacking and snot and I'll spare you the rest of the details.  Then, like lemmings jumping off a cliff, one after the other, came the rest of the family.  I avoided them... all of them.  I gave air hugs and blew kisses across the room for two weeks.  Then I left for Tempe.  All was well until the plane ride home when I started experiencing just a little sniffle.  No big deal.  I just run a half marathon.  This sort of thing is expected, right?  Well, I got worse.  Monday I was not feeling too well.  Tuesday I crawled home from work only to go to bed and remain there until time for work Wednesday morning, 14 hours later.  Wednesday was similar, and Thursday consisted of hacking up "planets".  I have isolated myself from my family the entire week, and don't forget I avoided them for two weeks prior to my infestation.

I love my family, but I was really hoping to avoid the whole sickness thing.  And, BTW, I am not one of those high maintenance men who are super needy when they are sick.  I would much rather be left alone.  I am very thankful to my wife for trying to take care of me and to my kids who have been super understanding.

Needless to say, I have not been training since the race Sunday.  I had a hard enough time walking from the bed to the bathroom and back, much less running multiple miles.  Today I felt poorly... still... but NEEDED to train.  I have another race in two weeks.  It was not pretty, not my best performance, but I did manage 5.6 miles.  I did not die after, but I was dizzy and maintained a nice headache and runny nose.  I am hopeful that tomorrow will allow me to feel even better and allow me some decent training time.

BTW... For the record, although the above stories are both true, I cannot blame the boys entirely.  I am betting there were other factors that contributed.  Maybe someone one one of the plane flights?