My Husband is Amazing (for like the 372nd time)

I was really sick on Friday. I felt "weird" when I woke up that morning, threw up in the shower (never happens), thought I had passed that trial, made it to school, and nope, it wasn't over yet. I knew I would surely feel better soon because there was simply nothing left in my belly. By the way, I never felt ill like the flu, rather, my guess is food poisoning because I perked up rather quickly. So I stayed at school, partly because I didn't have some copies made for a sub (couldn't fathom pulling anything together for a sub, so much easier to just make my way through the day...and yet, it was a long, hard day and I couldn't attempt eating again until I returned home), but the other reason I wanted to stay on was that if you miss part of a Friday, they count Saturday and Sunday as sick days also! Yep. And if you're absent Monday morning, they count that you were sick on Saturday and Sunday as well, even if you truly weren't. They assume you're sick on your weekend days. So I stayed. These are two of the reasons teachers willingly choose to go to work sick: too much trouble to make lesson plans for a sub and too much punishment for being sick on the first or last day of the week.

Can I just thank all the teachers who have abused the sick leave policy which brought us to this point of getting nailed for being sick on a Friday or a Monday? The district grew tired of all the "sick" leave/three day weekends and "sick" leave/four day weekends, so now we have these rules...and you know what else? They don't really tell you about them up front. I only know because I've stayed in touch with a rep from a former school.

All those surgeries I had...I thought I was being a good teacher by scheduling them on the last day of school prior to Fall Break or Thanksgiving Break or Christmas Break, you know, so I could heal over vacation and only miss ONE day of school in order to spare the kids from having a sub for too long. Stupid, stupid, stupid. ALL those vacation days were counted as sick days for me. I know of a teacher who was fired for taking too many sick days. Never mind she had a malignant brain tumor and died, she was sick too often and her administrators had a record of it. So she was fired and lost all of her health benefits just when she needed them the most. Her poor family! That's why if I have to make a medical appointment during the school day (because no one schedules anything early enough for you to get to work by 7:30 a.m. or late enough for you to leave work at 4:00 p.m..."our last appointment of the day is at 4:00 p.m."), I'll take just a half day of sick leave, on a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, never a Monday/Friday. I don't want to be caught taking advantage of my employer!

That's why I returned to work early after my knee surgery in April. I bit the bullet and scheduled the surgery on a Friday, but that's because Friday was the only day the surgeon does his surgeries--not my choice. I went ahead and planned to be absent the whole week after that which would have meant I would have been absent a total of 10 days (4 of those days Saturdays and Sundays). However, I was feeling pretty good, and I waited to see how my body was recovering, and I decided to return to work the following Friday which meant I only had 7 sick days! See what I did there? Saved myself from being "sick" a whole three, unfair, days!

But anyway, the title of this post is to honor my husband. He turned on the electric blanket, got a trash can for my bedside (but that part of the sick was long over), brought me some water, tucked me in and let me sleep on Friday afternoon and evening. When I woke up he made a cup of chicken broth for me. I slept all night and felt so much better, except for the pain I felt when laughing, having the hiccups, or sometimes breathing (you know all the chest and gut muscles that get strained from vomiting?). I have a huge final project due for my graduate class on Tuesday and although I've been working on it all along, I still need to devote more time to it, so I left him yesterday to head to school to work without distraction.

While I was gone, he cleaned both bathrooms. I did not request this. Everything is clean, sanitized, towels washed, all three rugs washed, garbage emptied...they look beautiful. He also did other laundry and dishes. He went to the grocery store and got the mail. And then we went to stake conference. He made dinner after that. Marriage is not a system of score keeping and paybacks, but seriously, I need to find a way to pay him back and spoil him and support him however I can, because he is so very good to me.