Cabin Fever as the Prelude to Creativity. I Hope.

Is it Monday? We stepped into a corner of the Twilight Zone this weekend, with the advent of the season’s first virus bug. My husband and I are happily untouched so far, but it hit my son with a vengeance. I thought only toddlers got high fevers. So far, he seems to be progressing through without any secondary crud, which is great, and I THINK we may be seeing around the corner to the healthy side of things this morning.  But he’s a healthy kid, and it’s been a really long time since he spent a few days on the couch sleeping and playing video games.

And it’s been a long time since I clicked into that sort of nothing-to-do-but-still-not-doing-anything mode. Where you’ve got the meds into the kid, his temp is down, you can hear Mario chirping happily away, and you’ve got hours with  nowhere to go and nothing you have to do.

But you still don’t write.

Maybe it’s just me. (Although I sure hope not.) Granted, the past few weeks have been super busy, and I’d kind of planned to take the weekend off, anyway. But the thing is, I don’t slip easily away from that mental check-in with the sick kid and into that deep focus on what’s going on with my MCs. Really, I kind of wish I could. My son would be just fine without me wandering past, doing a forehead check, asking if he wants some more juice. The doc checked him out yesterday, and there’ s nothing secondary going on. He’s not five; he’s fifteen. Then again, maybe it’s nice having Mom around and present, as long as she doesn’t suggest one more time that you might want to bring your tired brain to focus on a book for a while, instead of how many coins Luigi has. Maybe, when you’re sick at fifteen, it’s just as nice to have that juice catered as it was at five.

I don’ t know.

What I do know is that it’s Day 4. He’s still got a bit of a fever, but it seems to be holding steady at a lower spot. The cough’s still there, and–yeah–it’s a pain, but it’s probably not worse.

And I’m starting to get just a little bit…stir crazy.

We’re going to mix it up a bit today. I printed off yet another copy of basic Mah Jong rules, and we’re getting my set out later to play. I WILL get some laundry folded. I might wave that book at him just one more time. I’ll open up one  of my research books, rather than yet another novel. I’m going to keep my PiBoIdMo notebook open and nearby, to see if I can make up for the dearth of scribbling that’s shown up in it the last few days.

Yeah.

And, let me tell you, when that temperature is back to normal, the cough disappears, and I drop my son at school again, here’s what I WILL be doing.Okay, yeah, with a computer and probably not with an owl on my head. But you get the picture.

Have a happy AND HEALTHY week, everyone!