Sick Days and Counterfeit Energy

Yesterday Zoe had some sniffles, so I kept her home from school. 

One crazy thing about this past year of masks and COVID is that we have not been sick. I remember on March 12 of last year, I bought some cold and flu medicine. It's funny how I can remember the dates - it was a Thursday, the day after the WHO declared the pandemic, and our governor was having an afternoon press conference that I feared would cause people to panic shop, so what did I do? Spent the morning panic shopping so I wouldn't get caught in the afternoon panic shopping rush. Anyway, the store was limiting the purchase of cold and flu products, so I bought the maximum four - two for kids and two for adults, and until yesterday, they remained on the shelf of my storage room, coated in dust. In a "healthy" winter, I go through two bottles of cold medicine a month for the kids at minimum. Yet, here we've gone nearly a year without touching any. 

I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm putting it out there... We have not been sick like we have been in any year past. I know many people who say the same, and I've heard a lot of teachers and school staff state that they haven't been sick. It's pretty wild. 

Anyway, having Zoe home from school was quite the experience. By 9:00 a.m. she was bored and trying to convince me to take her to school. Eva has afternoon kindergarten, so she was home with Zoe for the first few hours of the day. Then when Eva left for school, Zoe got even more bored. I let her paint, and I read to her for a while, then I let her play Minecraft. But she was pretty unamused about staying home. 

She followed me around for a lot of the time and talked my ear off. She asked question after question. 

"Mom? Is Snoop Dogg a robot?"

"Wanna see me stand on my head?"

"What time is it?"

"How do artists know how to paint fruit bowls?"

Fruit bowl by Zoe

"Can I teach you how to play Minecraft?"

"Where does blue come from?"

"What about brown?"

"Do we have any finger paint?"

"Is it time for Daisy to come home from school yet?"

"What if a YouTube star moved into Grandma's neighborhood?"

"How much longer til school gets out?"

"Why do fairies have pointy ears?"

Sick days with Zoe

She exhausted me to the point of doing something I've never done before. I drank a 5-hour energy. 

Now, I'm no stranger to caffeine, but I haven't had soda since Labor Day of last year, and I've never really had an energy drink. So I was excited to see how my body would respond to the shock of a 5-hour energy. Scotty and I bought a couple of 5-hour energy drinks to keep us awake for New Year's Eve, but we ended up not using them. So when exhaustion washed over me as I tried to navigate a day alone with Zoe, I remembered that I had a 5-hour energy on top of the fridge, and I went for it. 

That? Was one nasty dose of juice, I'll tell you what. I chugged it down, and then I writhed for ten seconds in disgust. Ho. Ly. Cow. And the noises that came out of me, "Blech. Agh! Oof!" 

Nasty. Nasty. Nasty.

After I drank it, I sat on the couch and waited for the magic to happen. My stomach made some really horrible noises. Was it the 5-hour energy or the awful Panda Express lunch I regretted treating myself to on the way back from the dentist? I'll never know. But thank heavens I wasn't out in public because my gut sounded like a creaky door hinge.

Nothing amazing happened. I stayed tired, but I managed to NOT fall asleep flat on my face. Is that it? Is that all I get after stomaching the most non-strawberry tasting, strawberry flavored liquid known to man?

Or maybe... just maybe... it had a delayed effect. Because I listened to three hours of an audiobook last night while laying in bed. Normally I can listen to fifteen minutes tops before I’m dozing. So perhaps my 1:00 pm dose of 5-hour energy activated around 9:00 last night.