Even Farmer H And His Breather Can't Be Blamed

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is feeling under the weather and over the hand-coughing clerk at Casey's last Saturday.

I can't prove it was her. But Saturday evening, she coughed into her hand before giving me my change and handing me my pizza. I am quite conscious of not touching my face until Germ-X or soap-and-water cleanse my hands after a trip to town. BUT...

Monday and Tuesday I had a headache. It wouldn't go away, up over my eyebrows. Nothing incapacitating, but enough to take OTC meds for. Which didn't work. The same days, my joints were killing me. My walk up the driveway Tuesday was not pleasant. I felt like I was underwater, in slow motion. No energy. And my nose dripped a couple of times. Then Wednesday was no headache, but a lot of throat-clearing. Thursday morning, I woke up with a sore throat. Thursday night I slathered on the Vick's VapoRub. And now I am sneezing clear stuff and coughing up yellow stuff, with wheezing and throat-clearing.

Seriously. I am not around people! And by people, I mean 100 kids in and out of a classroom every day, and a couple of hundred of them in the cafeteria traipsing past me. HOW DID I GET SICK?

I think I must have inhaled a few of the microbes coughed out by Casey's Clerk. That's where this debilitating illness has started: in my lungs. Not with a runny nose, not with watery eyes. I didn't exactly jam my microbey fingers down my trachea to put the virus in there. I think I just breathed it in.

I'm not really good at holding my breath around sick people any more, like I once was at my desk, and standing in my doorway when they strode down the hall, trailing sickness in their wake.

I'm kinda miserable.