Super Flu 2013, or The Lost Week of 2013

As you may have guessed from this post's title, a rigorous bout of the flu kept me from posting on the blog last week, or from doing anything of substance, really, until Sunday. My son, my husband, and I all came down with some form of the illness around the beginning of the week, and so our household barely functioned for seven days. 

Yesterday, after waking up and feeling vaguely human, my husband and I went on a massive disinfecting bender, assaulting almost all surfaces in the house with Clorox wipes, changing sheets and towels, washing said sheets and towels, washing all clothes that may have had a remote chance of being sneezed on or coughed at, vacuuming up all of the dog hair that we'd ignored all week, and then collapsing into two piles of sniffling, coughing lethargy because, dammit, cleaning is exhausting when you've spent most of the week comatose from the flu.

In fact, every normal routine task feels monumental. I just put Little Miss Talkalot on the bus (the only one of our clan who didn't fall prey to the flu, although she's developed a nasty cough), and I feel like I need to go back to bed. 

Also, I feel like I've lost a week of my life. Thankfully, we're on winter break at the college, so I didn't have to cancel classes, but there goes a week I'd intended to ease into spring class prep. This week's tasks, therefore, will have a little more urgency behind them since we begin classes on Tuesday.

Last week, the school decided to cancel my Advanced Poetry Writing course for the spring because only ten students were signed up for it. Now in its place I'll be teaching another regular, run-o'-the-mill course (Standard Freshman Comp, Introduction to Literature, or Developmental Writing), which normally I would find super depressing and frustrating -- but after having my brains addled by the flu and knowing that I have only a week to prep for whatever course they give me as a replacement, I'm just fine with taking whatever's easiest. Also, knowing that I'm going to have the course for a little less than half of a semester before I give birth makes it easier to take on another intro course.

So today's goals are simple and non-writing related: laundry, and beginning to tackle the Spring 2013 course outlines. Also, keeping my little boy occupied while his sister's away at school, and somehow managing to get more rest so that I can defeat this upper respiratory nastiness that seems to have settled into my lungs. (A lovely parting gift from Señor Flu.)

In fact, I think I'll start on the latter right now. I believe I'll go back to bed for an hour or so, because I can, and because I won't be able to do that within a short week.