I am not a good patient. In fact, I've never really understood the word, "patient" as applied to the ill. As a mood descriptor, it's highly inaccurate (have you ever met a contented-to-wait sick person?) and as a proscriptive noun, it still lacks a little something. Sit still and wait? While my nose is running faster than my toddler?

Those who know me will understand that patience has never been my strong suit. Be a patient is even less so.

So I spent from Thursday coughing and hacking and wheezing and moaning and denying. Used up a tree and a half's worth of tissue paper, a strange cocktail of over-the-counter drugs and most of John's tolerance.

Am now on the mend, which is good, because when you're a mother, life doesn't stop just because you're sick. You don't get a day off and your mental imagery of the work that needs doing is enhanced by cold medication. Someone else may wrangle the kid, but the housework accumulates and the backlog grows, to mythical proportions in your mind's eye. You realise this, of course, and attempt to do things like laundry and tidying while only 10% awake and under the influence of multisyllabic compounds that claim to soothe. You can tell a mother is truly sick when she says, "I'm going to lie down now and the housework will have to be done when I'm better," because that means she's sick enough to face what I'm facing this morning:

1. four loads of laundry (or more)
2. tub in the bathroom full of shoes the dog barfed on
3. bathtub full of toys
4. bathrooms (2) that need cleaning. Two weeks worth.
5. two dishwasher loads of dishes
6. pots and pans
7. toys in every room
8. clothes and wet washcloths and towels and other bits of laundry in every room
9. heaps of stuff on every flat surface
10. a kitchen floor that will actually make your feet dirty if you walk on it
11. an extra dog and a half's worth of fur on the hardwood floors
12. two weeks worth of dog poop to scoop outside
13. compost to empty
14. bedroom to vacuum
15. assorted other little things too numerous to mention but which will gobble up a day or more.

Maybe I should go back to being sick….