Holy frijoles, this flu I've got is UTTERLY AWFUL. It keeps morphing from one bad set of symptoms into another.

The worst so far is the Body Temperature Roller Coaster. Arms in the air, everyone!
Let's take a look at the diagram, shall we?

So at one extreme I am literally BURNING UP with fever and sweating my boobs off. Luckily, I don't feel *so* sick when I have the Heat Miser thing going on. I mean, I'm still miserable, but not *as* miserable as I am in Freezing My Ass Off mode.

When the Freeze Miser thing hits, I sit on the floor in a ball and grind my forehead into my knees. That's it. I can't do anything else. First of all because I'm too cold to unfold myself out of a semi-fetal position...also, we have heater vents down at floor level, so I try to strategically position my collapse for maximum heat intake.

Oh, well I do shiver and shake uncontrollably too. That's a lot of fun. NOT.

For the past 3.75 days (but who's counting?) I've been riding this bullshit roller coaster and hey, you know what? I WANT TO GET OFF. Not only because I feel awful, but because I am literally crippled by this thing, and have YOU ever tried taking care of two small and rambunctious children while sitting on your kitchen floor with your forehead grinding into your knees? It's not so easy.

This weekend the Young and the Restless were not only that, but they were extra LOUD too. Adrian has been screeching every time he wants to get my attention, or communicate anything at all. I am madly signing to him, hoping that he'll catch on that screeching is not a good way to communicate, but it IS a good way to ensure that he will be put out on the corner for adoption.

Julian is overtired from being kept awake by coughing fits all night long. That makes him kind of nutty, and he has been screeching a lot too, even though he can speak perfectly well. Peer pressure, you know.
...

Well, I stopped writing there yesterday and then got too sick to do any more. In the meantime it's been pretty nightmarish. I'm still not getting any sleep at night, and not able to lie down for more than a little bit at a time during the day. EVERYTHING HURTS.

Chasing after two kids is hard enough when I'm well, but this sick? Impossible. I can't do it. But my babysitter is sick too, and Dan is busy with his new job. So my options are slim to none.

As a result, I have pretty much lost my sanity. Today I took Adrian's diaper off to let him air out a bit, as he had a little rashy spot in the fold of his groin. Then I felt really weak and dizzy and had to lie down on the rug in the living room. Julian and Adrian were both playing nearby, with Julian's train set. I kept thinking, "MUST GET UP AND PUT A DIAPER ON THE BABY", but I literally couldn't move, I felt so awful and I was so exhausted.

Suddenly I hear Julian say, "Ewwwww, MOMMY!" and I crack an eye open. Adrian is eating something, and there is a streak of something out the side of his mouth. What could he be *eating* over there?

"Ewwww, it's stinky!" At that my heart stopped. No, dear god, let it NOT be that. But yes, god DID let it be that. And it was bad. Boy, was it ever bad. A baby smeared with poop, a floor smeared with poop, and me, laying there practically unable to get up.

Well, I DID get up, of course, since the problem was growing worse by the minute as he moved around. All I can say is that I have absolutely ZERO sense of smell at the moment, and I have never been more thankful of that. Because otherwise I think I would have been retching, cleaning that shit up. It took every remaining iota of energy I had to clean up floor and baby, and I burst into tears and pitched a fit, a loud HYSTERICAL fit at the end.

The fit went something like this:
I'M SO SICK AND SO TIRED, I CAN"T TAKE IT ANYMORE! I'M UP ALL NIGHT LONG WITH THESE KIDS, AND I CAN'T LIE DOWN FOR EVEN FIVE MINUTES DURING THE DAY EITHER! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET BETTER LIKE THIS, WITH THESE FUCKING KIDS DRIVING ME NUTS AND GIVING ME NO PEACE!

I think that's what I said. I felt bad including Julian in that, because he leaves me alone (for the most part) during the day. But at night he is usually the one keeping me awake.

Last night I had just gotten to sleep, like literally 20 minutes earlier, and all of a sudden Julian starts wailing in his room. "Wah!!! Ehhhhhhhhhh!" Like a car alarm going off in there. I wait to see if *maybe* Dan will hear him and go in to quiet him, but of course not.

I haul myself up out of bed to find out what's wrong. "Why are you crying? What's wrong?"
"I don't know." And he stops crying, rolls over, goes back to sleep. Well, thanks for waking me up and getting me out of bed then! I appreciate that. Really.

I finally get back to sleep amid my feverish shakings, shiverings and sweatiness. Adrian wakes up a couple of times, then I spontaneously wake up because I'm BURNING a HOLE in the bed, I'm so on fire. My shirt is soaked. It takes me a long time to cool off enough to sleep again, and just as I am drifting off, I hear Julian's door open and he comes in, climbs into bed with us, and proceeds to thrash around, toss and turn. I tell him to cut it out or he has to go back to his own bed. Then Adrian wakes up again, Julian tosses and turns.

It is at this point that I begin to plot how I will abandon my family. Because this gig? It's not working out for me too well. I'm sick as a dog, and no one gives a shit. Let's pile more on her!

I won't rag on Dan too much here, but suffice to say that my husband, in spite of having witnessed me utterly freak out and lose it earlier in the day, proceeded to leave a big pan of ravioli out on the counter (after serving himself a portion), and that was after leaving sushi out on the table the night before, PLUS leaving the peanut butter out (and open, can't put the lid back on, no sirree!), but hey, at least we won't die of food poisoning from him leaving the peanut butter out. But meat ravioli? SUSHI? Oh, and shepherd's pie was left out on the counter a few days ago. Why bother returning it to the refrigerator? Too much work, that cleaning up after yourself, putting food away thing. Might sprain a finger or something. Taking it OUT of the refrigerator is enough of a task.

Besides, we're not sick enough around here. We need food poisoning on top of everything else. Right? Hmmm, maybe not. Well, no worries, *I'll* take care of it, just as soon as I hack up a lung or two and peel myself up off the floor. Oh, and did I mention I'm taking care of the kids too, in my horribly ill state? But really, don't worry about little old *me*.

OK, just one more thing. When we went to go vote tonight, I heard Dan volunteering to a total stranger behind us that I was really sick and had been BEDRIDDEN for several days. Yes, as in "confined to bed (by illness)". As if! Like I've been in bed resting up, dozing on and off, perusing magazines, and ringing a little bell for Dan to bring me tea and chicken soup. HA! I SHOULD be bedridden, I would probably not be nearly this sick now if I HAD been bedridden, OK?

Aaaargh! My husband means well, I know he doesn't do this stuff on purpose, but when he gets all wrapped up in his own head with work stuff, forget about it.

I went to go see my new doctor today for an urgent care appointment, dragging both kids along of course. I was a little freaked about driving there, as I was feeling dizzy and light-headed. You see, I *was* finally able to take a nap today from 12 until about 2pm, but then my appointment was at 2:30pm, so I had to wake up and then rush, rush, rush, and my stomach is feeling icky, and lord knows I didn't want the SUSHI that had been left out on the table for several hours last night.

That's when I saw the ravioli pan sitting out on the counter with the lid all pried up. And Julian says to me, "Mommy, I'm hungry. I didn't have any lunch." Wha?
"So Daddy never gave you any lunch while I was sleeping with Baby Brother?"
"No. I'm hungry!"

I grab a little snack and we head out. The doctor is nice. She comes in the exam room and offers her hand to me. I shake it with my hot, sopping paw and tell her my sad story. She listens to my breathing and has to dry off the stethoscope afterwards. I have a temperature of 101.6. I'm VERY SWEATY.

She concludes that I probably started with a mild flu, but now I have a very bad sinus infection, and that is why I've had this horrible fever for five days straight. My body is trying to drive the bacteria out by coming as close to spontaneous combustion as possible. This also explains why I have yellow and green blood-tinged chunks of goo coming out of my head. So now I have a course of antibiotics to take and will hopefully improve soon.

God, Adrian is a terror. I mean, he's a darling baby, and about as sweet and loving as can be. But that kid is a whirlwind of destruction. Tonight Dan was playing with Julian (after I yelled at him for not being helpful) and I guess he thought I was watching Adrian, but really I was in a walking delirium. I had just hauled my limp body up off the carpet to get some juice because my mouth had gone bone-dry. Anyway, I was putting water in my glass and I hear CRASH! Adrian had just gotten into the cupboard with my glass baking dishes in it (which I thought I had rubber-banded shut, but I guess not) and pulled them out onto the floor from the top shelf, thereby shattering two of them.

So that was fun, cleaning up shards of glass with a dustpan on my hands and knees, sinuses throbbing, all sweaty and ready to pass out. Way to end the day! Can't wait to do it all over again tomorrow! Woohoo!

Just realized that it's 10:00pm, I haven't eaten lunch or dinner, and I should probably change my shirt, since it's soaked with sweat again. Ugh. And maybe hydrate a little, ya think?