Sickies of the world unite!

I have read too many blogs in the past week of illness. It is time for the sickies of this infected world to unite!! We have had so many hacking, congested coughs this week that when all the kids are finally settled into bed at night all I can smell is Mentholatum fumes wafting through the house and the soft hum of the humidifier lulling us off into an interrupted night of sleep...then the coughing starts and it suddenly sounds like the Tuberculosis wing of a hospital....minus the bloody handkerchiefs. The fevers come and go enough that at night they are miserable but by day they are full of energy and pounce. Haley was apparently on death's door last night but cheerily jumped out of bed this morning anxious to go to school and not miss out on "crazy hair day" at the start of Spirit week. (Tomorrow is fairy tale/Star Wars day...no doubt trying to accommodate a wider choice selection for the young gents in the school...What we found amusing was the argument over what Star Wars character they were going to be seeing as how that is all they have been watching for about 3 weeks now. "I wanna be Princess Leia with buns!" "I get to be Padme....no! Queen Amidala with the white face!!"....On a side note, Clark and I were laughing to ourselves on Saturday. We were sitting in the office working on things and the girls were playing and doing each other's hair in the bathroom when suddenly they went from singing Barbie and the Diamond Castle to Darth Vader's death march...dum dum dum, da da dum, da da-dum...how sweet.
Was that ALL in parenthesis? Forgive me while I close that very long afterthought .)
Anyway, I have opened up the windows to freeze out the germs and let in fresh air while dousing the house and everything that little hands touch with this little gem in life that allows me to sleep at night knowing that infectious germs have met their end (I don't really want to know if it works, I just like the comfort of believing that it does an absolutely thorough job.) I keep all of my disinfecting products in the "Clorox Shrine" section of my cleaning cupboard. I light a candle and choose my weapon of disinfection for the disease of the day. We have been pushing fluids and vitamin C and we will prevail. Our hands might just shrivel up and fall off due to the amount of antibacterial gel applied 100x's a day. I take comfort in knowing that both of my daughter's teachers have antibacterial gel bottles bigger than your head sitting right outside of their classrooms and strategically placed around the desks. I will spare you the nagging quandary that is a parent's decision to send a child to school or keep them home. What are the rules? A hacking cough? A fever? a child with puppy dog eyes and a plea that could melt Darth Vader's heart? (goin' with the theme here...) I mean, if I let them stay home every time they begged me on their knees I would be arrested by the truancy officer faster than you can say home school. And then I would have to home school them. And by home school I mean a lot of Wii and Disney Channel interspersed with reading selections from Wikepedia. Trust me, the Scharman home school would get you to adulthood only to land you a job as some kind of professional gamer or talk show host....or better yet, they wouldn't ever get a job and live at home forever and isn't that really the point of them learning stuff?...to learn and grow and get an education, and then a higher one so that they will eventually move out?.....but I digress, where was I?
I keep imagining the sequence from the Scrubs episode of "My Cabbage" where they show how germs spread with green highlighter...it's disturbing. (Go ahead and you tube it, it's funny though only slightly inappropriate at times...what Scrubs episode isn't?)
So it's time to spray the house again...faucets, door knobs, light switches, chairs, toys...I'll spray anything that stands still...maybe for Family Home Evening tonight we'll do Clorox-Anywhere-Spray-Baths. A nice antibacterial "dip", if you will.
So America, infuse yourselves with Vitamin C, Echinacea or Zinc...whatever floats your boat to annihilates those germs....and then don't touch us and I'll keep drilling my children with the mantra "hands out of eyes, nose, mouth...hands out of eyes, nose, mouth..." Good luck, may the force by with you.

This is as about as "crazy" as we get at 7:30 in the morning...on the other hand, I could have just let them wake up and put a bow in it...that's pretty crazy sometimes too.
**Disclaimer: Lest you read this and not pick up on the heavy layer of sarcasm...I love my kids. I find them charming. In fact, I like to ask them regularly to stop growing and live with me forever so that they can sit on my lap and read actual books until our eyes pop right out of our smart little heads. And I really do have a Clorox shrine...but does it really have candles? Of course not, most cleaning products are flammable, doy.