Sick of being sick

I don't do "sick" well. I believe it is because I don't do enforced stillness well, either, unless my brain is firing on all eight cylinders and I am concentrating on something.

A friend who is a physician once said that, when I die, the funeral home people will have to tell me, "Lie down! We're putting the lid on your coffin now. No, lie DOWN!"

Anyway, I called off work today because I have this beastly cold and am a real germ spreader. So there I sat, grading my online course, checking the email, attempting to watch daytime television, which is a really depressing medium with no redeeming value, and longing for spring.

I do know that I drive myself too hard, although I have gotten wiser as I have gotten older. I used to work NO MATTER WHAT, pushing myself despite developing pneumonia or acute gastroenteritis, going to my job despite symptoms I might be having telling me to do otherwise. Instead of forcing myself to perform my duties until I pass out and end up in the emergency room, which was a biennial occurence, I now allow myself to be sick for a day or two, no matter how depressing it is. I also schedule "pajama days," where we have enforced downtime as a family and do very little except hang out together and vegetate.

However, too much more of "my best friend's father is my social worker's cousin's ex-wife's sister's baby's daddy and is taking a DNA test to prove it," and I might end up in intensive care.