Achoo, I think I'm through!

Today is Thursday. (It IS. Check your calenders, and look under two days before the day after tomorrow, which is Saturday . . . WOO HOO . . . the weekend's almost here.) Today is also the first day in almost a week (if you round) that I have felt halfway decent. Yah, I've been touching things and haven't been able to discern what it is I'm touching . . . all kidding aside (for now), I'm finally feeling like my old self. Since I ran (and lost) the 5K race last Saturday, I've been trying to recover from what I thought was just a cold. As two days turned into three which turned into four, record territory for a cold of mine, I began to suspect that I was actually sick.

It's only fair, I thought: I give my students free math, they give me free viruses. I guess a nasal infection that has gone pulmonary is the lesser of two evils when compared with math homework. I still come out ahead.

Getting sick this week could not have come at a worse time (as if getting sick is ever convenient.) I had a whole host of "healthy" activities planned that have, nonetheless, gone on as scheduled. With a sore throat, a rumbling cough (I'm down to 3 packs times zero per day), and a constant sniffling (and not because of my students' recent test scores), I have amazed myself that I haven't called in sick yet this week. If you haven't read yesterday's blog, I don't blame you (but why, then, are you reading this one?), but you should, lest you not understand the eminent imminence that are the TAKS and AP tests which are now upon me. I have been humping it in the classroom preparing students for their state exams, as well as holding two-hour after-school review sessions (5-7pm) for the upcoming AP Calculus exams. All this is taking place while I have felt the least able to do it.

I have wanted to do nothing but crawl under the covers with a warm blanket over me and a bag of the new "Harvest Cheddar" flavored "Sun Chips" (not to mention the latest edition of my favorite mag: The Week.) But I have persevered. Sure, I felt like crap, but I tried not to let my students know (that's what family is for), and I taught the heck out of the math, valiantly fighting my way through the fatigue and the abominable post nasal drip. My voice even cracked several times, slipping into falsetto, much to the delight of the giggling students (they even WAKE UP to giggle.)

After letting my wonderful, superbuolous, beautiful RN of a wife take care of me with homemade chicken soup, TLC, and the appropriate medication, I finally feel like I a semblance of my old self today. And just in time, too! I taught a full day of classes, picked up my son from scool (it's a special school), went to the doctor to see what's wrong with me (got some prescriptions and and an allergy shot), cried, then dropped off my son at his piano lesson, hurried back to school for an AP review session, then raced to my daughter's Pre-K music program at the local church (where I had "still camera" duty), only to return home to feed the kids junk food, feed the dogs, goats, fish, cat, and chickens, and write this blog, while my wife was out gallivanting at the local supermarket and subsequently visiting her coworker with new baby at the local hospital. Thank God for macaroni and cheese and Strawberry Shortcake videos.

Anyway, today I start a Z-pack of antibiotics (it's supposed to make my lugies clear instead fo green), and I have upped my asthma steroid meds (which means my lungs will look like Barry Bonds' neck). Mathematically speaking, I guess you can say that I'm on the positive side of a relative minimum with a positive first and second (only because of the meds) derivative.

Now I'm going off on a tangent.

Look out world, as I'm feeling better, I'm back to enthusiastically making a fool of myself in the name of math education (I my wife is done taking care of a pathetic, whiny baby.)