Not Exactly on Top of the World

I could feel it coming on: achy joints, that weird sick feeling in the back of the throat. Oh well. I had work to do. Chalk it up to all the vitamin C I’ve consumed on a near-daily basis for the past twelve months, but it wasn’t really bothering me.

Of course sitting in a warm school office answering phones under fluorescent lighting just somehow makes you feel a little worse.

First, however, Puck – returning from the basement library – saw me walking down the hallway to the office and took off like a charging bull. Squeezed me in a huge hug around the middle as he does several times a day, every day. (I fear for my internal organs.) He insists they’re not hugs.

“I JUST LOVE TO SQUISH FINGS!!!! AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

But I know they are.

I got over to the Big House a little after noon to take an ibuprofen and relax while Mom finished watching “White Christmas” until it kicked in heavy duty half an hour later. Whatever flu had hit, went out like a light.

But I wasn’t the only one afflicted. Little Bonnie the Bun-Bun was not doing well. She had been refusing food for a few days. Carrie wrapped up the wobbly little creature in a towel over a warm rice pack and tried to get some fresh parsley juice in her. She took a little, but didn’t seem enormously interested.

Puck tore out of his classroom as usual just before three o’clock with a crazy smile. Apparently his biggest shared news of the day was telling all the kids that he didn’t have a TV.

“We don’t have a TV, right, Mom?” he wanted to confirm.

“Well, we do, but we never use it.”

I guess that shocked them into silence for awhile. The fact that my son wasn’t even completely sure this information was correct, confirmed my suspicions that he doesn’t spend much time in the creepy dark corner of our basement.

Puck’s monterey-jack-bacon-green-apple grilled cheese was quickly consumed at dinner over “I Love Lucy”. On my laptop. Then we looked at a fat National Geographic: “Visions of Earth”. Puck was so inspired by the stunning images, that he just had to express his awe in the best way he could manage it.

“I am shutting down my organs.”

That’s what I feel like whenever he gives me a non-hug.