My Norma Rae Day

I am on day five of a lovely winter cold and probably bronchitis, but I won’t go to the doctor’s office unless I’m really scared because I don’t like waiting in a room full of people carrying something even worse than I already have.

So I keep taking cold medicine, hoping it will all go away. The medicine itself gives me some incredibly weird dreams and leaves me feeling a little like I’m back in California in the late 60’s listening to Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

A couple of nights ago I dreamed I was pregnant (which always causes me to wake up screaming), and that I could pull the baby out of my armpit to check on him and then put him back when I was done. I think this is an odd way of my mind channeling the fact that having a baby at this age would be the pits.

I really want to go home, crawl into bed and sleep – but I can’t. It’s a syndrome I used to see with my mother. As women, we tend to feel incredibly guilty for being sick and needing some downtime. Maybe it comes from those years when small children and/or husbands would actually get irritated that you were sick because they needed something.

I remember the day after my daughter was born I had a tubal ligation (surgery). That night, the hospital sent me home. The next night, I had my two-year-old on my hip, cooking dinner with stitches in my stomach.

Ridiculous, right? Maybe we all need to stick our heads out of the window and say, “I’m sick as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Or pull a Norma Rae and hold up a cardboard sign that simply says “Sleep!”

Okay, that’s it. I’m going home and getting in bed. Except the phone’s ringing and I think it’s my daughter who wants to return a Christmas gift today. And my son is coming into the office later to make a video. And I need to finish up my book for the editor. And I need to take my mom some groceries.

So, tomorrow. Tomorrow I am going to stay in bed all day long. Right after I have the conference call and meet the exterminator. And get that report to my client.

I’m holding my Norma Rae sign over my head right now, calling for sleep. Does anybody out there see it?