Two Days of Solitude

For the past two days or so I have been home with strep throat and a temperature that hit 103 degrees at one point. The only time I did manage to leave my apartment was to go to the doctor and to get my medicine. Total time out of the apartment was approximately 57 minutes. During these past 48 hours I realized a few things:

• In a city with 8 million people, I managed to feel extreme solitude to the point where I realized that I need people interaction on a daily basis. Chatting online with various friends while they are working doesn't count.
• Mama Ribods is amazing. She couldn't make me soup, but she sent me a fresh Christmas wreath to hang on my door to brighten my day. In addition, she encouraged me to take as many days as I needed off from school. I can remember when we were kids, she would send us to school with all sorts of illnesses and tell us "to see how you feel once you get there...you might forget you are sick once you are at school." Yes, forget the lice in my hair that the Pig Pen gave me or the chicken pox on my face or the goo oozing from my pink eye.
  
• Missing school as a teacher is not nearly as fun as missing it was when we were kids. Making substitute plans is the worst.
  
• I still despise the tongue depressor as I did when I was a kid.
• Even I can watch too much Fox News. I never thought it would happen either. When I feel that I can ask intelligent questions to Press Secretary Tony Snow about the Iraqi Study Group it is time to turn it off.

With this being said, I am heading back to school tomorrow. I am probably going to find my markers thrown everywhere, things misplaced, and if I am lucky, the scent of a stink bomb. I hear we were attacked.