SICKNESS

If you are not dealing with it yet, you may soon be. Before anyone could get any vaccines, controversial though they may be, the youngest, strongest, most physically fit member of our family was stricken with the flu and then pneumonia. Apparently the H1N1 flu goes deeper into the lungs and significantly raises the possibility of complications, ala pneumonia. It also afflicts the older children and young adults with greater frequency. Thus, my sixteen year old is Patient Zero in the Aggen household (southern branch).

He was also run down from working six nights a week on top of doing full days of school and weight training. A recipe for disaster, yielding a great big cup of affliction.

So as I told his manager at work, we're done with that. Three nights a week, max. The guy agreed. After all, Kevin always shows up early for work, doesn't take breaks and does everything (and probably more than) they ask him to. Sounds a lot like his dad, who was hospitalized in his twenties from exhaustion. Seems he had a boss who liked to have him work day and night, day in and day out delivering sides of beef, until one day he couldn't move and his heart was affected. He ended up staying in the hospital for over a week. He slept the whole time.

I just love my menfolk, but sometimes I have to step in and save them from themselves. Or at least try. Often I am very ineffective. Then I go into Plan B, which is "mop-up" mode, cleaning, giving meds, cooking, fluffing up pillows, running interference between them and the outside world.


I am boiling down a chicken and even found a farm that will sell me the feet, which make the rich, gelatin broth which is so nourishing. (PLEASE DO NOT TELL MY FAMILY ABOUT THE CHICKEN FEET). My son Kevin will eat whatever I make, but he told me yesterday that actually he loathes soup. I told him there must have been a mistake at the hospital when he was born, and someone else is raising my soup-loving baby.

As a consolation prize to him, though, I will make homemade pizza and stromboli tonight as well. Now, once again, I am not working an outside job, and since I do not bring in any money, I suppose I am an abject failure and just plain weird to the outside world. I asked the Lord about this, and He said not to worry and that the check is in the mail.