C is sick with a bad cold. Poor baby. Blessed be, she only gets sick like once a year, but when she does, step back. She spent the day sitting on the couch with various fluids dripping down her face, barking out these wet rattling coughs. We went through dozens of tissues, but only two books, which she wanted to hear again and again and again and again, and they were books she hasn't been interested in since she was a baby.

Ah yes, she must have been thinking, Pat the Bunny. It was a simpler time. A time when my brains weren't oozing out my nose in horrific fashion. A time when I could walk three feet without Mommy accosting me with a wad of tissue, commanding, "Blow!"

Wiping a sick toddler’s nose is a Sisyphean task--absurdly heroic, ultimately futile. Who knew such a small kid could produce so much mucous? In fact, amid the monotony I began to wonder whether it was worth the effort.

Perhaps if I leave the nose unwiped, I reasoned, the clear viscous stuff on her upper lip will form a sort of dam and stop the flow. Hmm, I guess that would be bad.

Oh, I could never do that and you know it.

Eh. I’m not thinking very clearly. It was an exhausting day, and yet I did very little, but wipe, and urge sips of water on her. This morning at breakfast I was trying to get her to eat something, anything, by absent-mindedly feeding her Cheerios with my spoon, an activity that goes something like this.
C takes a bite... I take a bite.
C takes a bite... I take a bite.
C takes a bite... I get a cold because I'm
repeatedly
eating
after
my
sick
kid!

Apparently I am psychically connected to my kid such that her illness makes me dumb in the head. I’m like drunk E.T. to C’s Elliott.

Tomorrow will be better, because she will be better. I hope.