Leave Me Alone! I’m Sick!

I’ve been under the weather, as they say, for a few days now. Nothing serious, just a bout of some stomachy thing. I’ll recover.

I am not sick enough to be beyond complaining. I’m just going to complain about being sick. More specifically, I am going to complain about not being allowed to be sick the way the rest of this family is allowed to be sick. You know, I’d like them to make me soup, bring me a blanket, check on my need for medication and/ or hydration. Like I do for them when they’re sick. If they are not going to do these things for me, that’s fine. But, at the very least, they could just leave me alone. If my fever spikes to 104 degrees (Fahrenheit) and I dehydrate and die right here in the suburbs of Manhattan, that’s fine, too. At least I’ll have expired in peace. With no one bothering me!

My primary, but not my only, complaint is that I have been continually harassed about meals. This “not cooking thing” (a direct quote from the always sympathetic Fangette) while I am feverish, achy, and on the verge of vomiting is not entirely because I have adopted an “I can’t eat, so I’m not cooking” attitude. That plays a part, sure, but that’s not the only reason I have absented myself from food preparation. It’s because I’m sick. With a stomach virus.

Exactly what variety of idiot would you have to be to even want a viral person touching your food? I’m going to answer that. I’ve used the opportunity of being bed-ridden to mull this over. Somewhere between the napping, the sweating, the shivering, and the frequent trips to the bathroom I found the time to conclude that I live with lazy idiots.

It wasn’t just Fangette’s need for food that necessitated rousing her mother from her sick bed. Oh, no. There were several pressing matters that required my attention. Outside of the request for a french braid, these were all things that the other adult who lives in this house (or the teenager herself) could have and should have taken care of. If they weren’t lazy idiots, that is.

She needed her polyester work shirt ironed. This required a ten-minute dialogue in which I was forced to explain (and not for the first time, mind you) that it would melt if I ironed it. To be fair, I’ve been telling her this about most fabrics all of her life, so she may have been right to be suspicious. This time it’s true, though. I swear! It’s right there on the tag—a little iron symbol with a line through it.

She needed refills on her acne medication. Having the prescription numbers would have made this far easier, but she threw away the boxes. This is the second time she’s done that. Not having the prescription numbers meant that someone (guess who?) had to spend fifteen minutes on hold waiting to speak to an actual human being. I fell asleep while on hold. I’m not kidding. So, her prescriptions never got refilled. I told my husband that he would have to stop on his way home from work and take care of it. (He won’t do it on the phone— because he refuses to make phone calls. Refuses. Like a five-year-old who won’t get in the bath type of refusal.) I don’t hold out much hope that she will have her acne medication tonight.

She needed someone to quiz her for an upcoming Spanish III test. While I certainly do understand her reluctance to ask for help on a foreign language test from the man who pronounces “Chez” phonetically, I was really in no mood to reacquaint myself with the proper uses of ser and estar. Doesn’t she have classmates? I know she has the Internet.

She also had to make the usual requests for money. Money for lunch (there’s that food shit again), money to buy the Vans I’d promised her (a promise I do not remember ever making, but $45 was a small price to pay for a little peace and quiet), gift money for, yet another, “Sweet 16” party (hence the need for the French braid), and…. and…. and….

Finally, I’d had enough. So, I told her that all future requests until I felt better would really just have to go through her father. I told her that while I understood that I was clearly the better parent, she’d just have to settle for second-best until I got back on my feet.

She returned five minutes later with the following very, very bad news: “Dad says he doesn’t feel well.”

Great.

photo credit: blog.timesunion.com