We are the coughing family. Everyone is sick in one way or the other in various degrees of incapacitation. Cough, cough, hack and hack. This has been going on now for a couple weeks, starting with me. If one is sensitive to sounds (like me) then it can be very irritating at times. When I was at the peak of this sickness, Thea kept telling me to quit exaggerating all the time, e.g. my coughing had become just a psychological annoyance. Now she has got it and is hacking away tens times more than I ever did, and for much longer now. The other kids have gotten the hack-disease also. Poor Sabien is now lying in her bed trying to make drawings and listen to the radio for comfort. She was all pouting and teary-eyed when her mother had to leave for a so-called team-building course at the hospital. I guess she felt letdown that she would be stuck at home with her father. What a bummer, to be stuck with me of all people. Now that the hacking-disease has gone full circle around each of the family members, it will be my turn again. But do not expect anything less than a full battle of defense, and I will fend off this disease, banishing it from the Gish abode forever into the distant past. Hopefully these microscopic critters have not mutated in some way that my defenses will be over run again. Nowadays all these flu's and colds and other diseases mutate all over the place. I brought the disease here and unleashed it and it is up to me to get rid of it. Mind over matter will in the long run conquer everything, I hope.
