So hey! My mom and step dad offered to keep our kids last weekend. Yes! A whole child-free weekend for me and my husband! What would we do? The choices seemed endless! Drive around with no clear objective? Stop in at any old place we wanted, with no plan? Be spontaneous? We don’t even REMEMBER what it’s like to be SPONTANEOUS!

We were excited about the weekend is what I’m trying to get across to you. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Good.

So at 7am Saturday morning (one hour before we depart to Nana’s house) William barges into our bedroom, bouncing around like Tigger on meth saying he doesn’t feel well. I got him to stop bouncing long enough to take his temperature and it was fine. FINE! So I started suspecting that he was feeling anxious about spending the night at Nana’s. It’s been a while since he’s been there (the holidays and mother’s NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE have hindered the kids’ grandparent time). I figured Will was just a little scared. NO BIG DEAL. (Foreshadowing!)

William continued to complain but act totally NOT SICK while he ate his breakfast and packed his bags. Since I just KNEW he was faking, I threw those kids into the car and headed for my mother’s house. When we arrived, William hugged and generally slobbered all over my mother. And then he curled up in a ball on the couch and refused to remove his coat because he said he was cold.

Uh oh.

Yeah. He had a fever. I told the children we had to go back home. There was much crying. (Mostly me and Dave).

Will got worse throughout the day on Saturday, so on Sunday I made Dave take him to the pediatric clinic. Why Dave and not me? Because I am no longer strong enough to physically hold William down while they swab his nose for the flu test. Have you ever had a flu swab? Imagine a mile-long Q-tip being shoved up your nose so far that it seems they are scraping off a layer of your frontal lobe. It’s like that.

And hey! Will did indeed have the flu. LUCKY US!

So let’s just take a moment to sum up: 1) no free weekend without the kids 2) instead, stuck at home with a seriously sick kid and 3) his very active and healthy little sister 4) who now has no one to play with!

Oh! And let’s not forget! We’ve now exposed NANA to flu. YOU’RE WELCOME MOM!

We filled a prescription for Tamiflu (Which was… wait for it… TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS!). Then we hunkered down. This all started Saturday morning. William’s fever broke late last night. Which means that I went 4 1/2 days without so much as stepping outside my house. I was 24 hours away from either going insane or becoming a vampire.

When it came time to take Paige to Mother’s Day Out this morning, I genuinely worried that my car might not start. That it would have simply died from lack of use.

Much like my brain.