by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

The Toddler and I are sharing a cold. She comes and lands in my lap...then gently coughs in my face and...voila...I'm hacking and wheezing for another two weeks. However, somewhere in that two weeks, she is over what she gave me...but she still lands in my lap. And no matter how hard I try, inevitably she sticks her hand near my mouth or nose at some point, and the cycle starts over again. We've been doing this now since October. She just started on the next round today. Next week, I won't even have my wife here to share some of the burden. That one is off to Florida, 74 year old aunt in tow, to visit her 70 year old sister and brother in law. (My wife was a true "after thought" baby: her sisters were 17 and 18 years older than her. Her mother fainted when the good doctor gave her the news.) I still can't hear out of either ear: both are filled with fluid from the last iteration of this shared virus. The most recent attempt to clear them has ended in abject failure. I go back to the Doc on Friday. I hope there is something else in his bag of tricks...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005