Still not going great

So on...Tuesday? (Time has no meaning) ARR had not had a fever for 24 hours. We sent him to school. He lasted until 2, upon which his fever came back and they sent him back home. My in-laws came to the rescue and took him out to their place for a few days.

Because I was still not well. (Am still not well. It's been over two weeks since symptoms started, and I'm still very much not well. Although significantly better.)

While attempting to work from home on Wednesday, things...did not go well. Got through about an hour of work, in which a number of the things that I was concerned and upset about pre-conference that got set aside until "after the conference" (which is not really happening because now we're already planning the next one) turned out to be, in fact, still serious problems. Which I have been unable to address, since I have been "working" from home since I got back, still dreadfully ill and unable to get through more than a sentence or two without coughing. And a mousetrap went off. And the mouse...exploded. Not guts, thank goodness, but blood. So much blood. How could something so small have so much blood? I'm not super squeamish by nature. I sighed and grabbed a plastic bag and took the mouse down to the garbage and came up the stairs and halfway up the stairs suddenly started crying hysterically and collapsed and sobbed for several uncontrollable minutes. On a throat that's been destroyed, so it sounded like someone was murdering a goose. After a while, I got sick of sitting there, but couldn't actually stop crying. So I crawled up the stairs, literally, still crying. Cleaned up the giant spray of blood, still crying. Finally called my boss, coughing and crying and half-hysterical, and declared I was done for the week. She was, as you might expect, totally freaked out and very much on Team Oh My God Stop Working.

(I hadn't really thought from there, but there was obviously an immediate "I broke my employee" call to HR that has resulted in EAP links and a giant bouquet of flowers and chocolate-dipped guilt-berries.)

So I'm effectively on leave for the moment. (The fact I'm the second total emotional breakdown in my division in two months is not a good look. Mine was less dramatic - at least I didn't have to be extracted from Europe or spend a month on Big Guns tranquilizers.) The tentative plan is for me to go in on Tuesday afternoon to have some long-delayed conversations (with that somewhat dependent on scheduling around a board meeting). But most likely not working next week, either, which I honestly really need.

So...that happened.

At the moment, I'm starting to actually mend a bit physically. We're at "bad cold" levels of coughing and sore throat, and I can make it through several sentences before I start to hack up a lung, and I'm capable of a couple hours of activity before I need a nap. Not having to think about work for a little while is helping some with the crushing depression. (This is 100% situational depression.) There are a ton of things I could do to feel better...but I'm still barely getting to enough energy to do any of them. I just have to wait out the Flu from Hell, really. Which sucks. But at least I don't have to go back to work on Monday?

Thing that actually was great

We had to postpone ARR's birthday - he was also out of school for a solid week and a half with the Flu from Hell. But fortunately, all the kids were able to make our rescheduled party today.

Airspaniel had sent us a giant box of Pokemon swag a month or so back, so we had a Pokeparty. Which was a wild success. As I told her, we did a Pokemon tournament - every kid got their own starter deck from the box o'wonders, we taught everyone to play, and then they got to play each other. Plus, they all got booster packs as their goody bags. So now ARR has five friends who both know how to play the game and also have a playable deck. (Several other parents expressed gratitude - at this point, half the kids already have cards, but they're totally random cards. None of them or their parents knew how to play and none of them had a deck that actually works, so everyone has been facing a nightmare of Pokemon-Calvinball as the kids make up incomprehensible games and force parents to play them.) So we can now have Pokemon playdates involving actual games where no one argues over the rules and then cries.

Chuckro and I had also come up with some additional party games. We had a bunch of Pokemon coloring sheets when people came in and when they finished their game. We had a scavenger hunt - Chuckro took more of the booster packs and hid the cards all over the basement and gave them a checklist to collaborate on. (Stuff like "find a full evolution sequence" and "find a grass type" and "find someone with X move".) We also had a "Trainer Says" game, which was "Simon Says" only all the motions were Pokemon moves. And Pokemon bingo. I made a Pikachu cake that wasn't perfect but was recognizable and ARR was thrilled.

So that went smashingly well. A total triumph. I've basically barely interacted with my kid for like a month, given the lead up to the conference, and the conference, and then two weeks of illness. So it was really really nice to have something go well, and to actually hang out with him being fun Mommy again, and for everyone to be happy. Success.