Sick Day

I stayed home sick today, with my eleven year old son who has not been at school since Tuesday of last week. While he is still sick, with congestion still evident in his voice and occasional coughing and sneezing, I think he's milked this cold long enough, and will be returning to school tomorrow. His dancing around when I had music playing and refusal to nap gave him away. I'm pretty sure I'll be back at school again tomorrow too. It's stressful to plan to not be there, and I feel like I need to be there this week to hype and tone set for next week's Outdoor Environmental Education trip.

Last night I used the new-ish automated system to find me a sub for today. I can't be certain, but I think it's the first time I've used it to find a sub for a sick day. Waiting four hours for confirmation that a sub was found and I would not have to wake up to an alarm the next day was stressful for me. But it was better than the old system of calling names on a list only to get voice mail or be told they already had a job lined up or other appointment that would not allow them to take my class for me.

This morning I woke up to the sound of the neighbors cars leaving, about an hour and a half after my alarm normally goes off. I spent the morning shopping on-line - which is something I seem to default to when I am home sick. At least today it was to put together an Amazon subscription list for a drink my son has been buying at school for over $2.00 a can, which I can get for under $1.00 a can with a subscription. I added items that seem to run out at the most inopportune times. This is our second try at Amazon subscriptions - we cancelled the first when the items on the list were overly abundant in our home. Although the subscription list I put together today may not last, at least I wasn't shopping for dresses that are too fancy to wear to work or shoes, jackets, purses, watches... those get expensive quickly.

After lunch and a nap I worked on lesson plans for this week, which I decided to stop working on when I decided to stay home sick last night. I also tweaked this year's OEE prayer service for our final morning at Camp Seymour so that every student in attendance this year will have a small part to read.

Through it all I've been pushing my son to get his work done. Missing an entire week of school has left him far, far behind. But he has definitely spent more time resisting working than working today. I think this was behind my decision to blog this evening.  "I'm working. You should be working too."  Shh - don't tell him I'm not really working.  As a sixth grader at an elementary school, this will probably be the last year of his life (until retirement) that he can miss an entire week of his normal schedule with little to no consequence. 

At least my alpaca rainbow sweatshirt got another wear out of the day. I think I'm not contagious anymore, so my plan is to head back to the classroom tomorrow. It really is easier to be there sick than to plan for being home.