Limping Into 2019

"The sailors brought in their bones a disease so violent that whoever spoke a word to them was infected and could in no way save himself from death... Those to whom the disease was transmitted by infection of the breath were stricken with pains all over the body and felt a terrible lassitude. There then appeared, on a thigh or an arm, a pustule like a lentil. From this the infection penentrated the body and violent bloody vomiting began. It lasted for a period of three days and there was no way of preventing its ending in death." (Michele di Piazze, 1347)

We, as a family, have not made a particularly impressive entrance into the New Year. James was the first to fall sick with whatever cold/flu/fever/bubonic plague has been working its way through us back a few days before Christmas. (In Calvin and Hobbesian irony, he had to go lay down on the couch as soon as he had finished his last batch of schoolwork before the holiday break.)

I was next, and then Felix and Owen. And now J is huddled up under the covers with the blanket warmer on and a hot toddy in hand, sick of the taste of cough drops, and trying to reclaim some sort of a voice.

We've all dealt with it differently. James was a trooper and basically just asked to be left alone with a blanket and a pillow. He watched about three seasons worth of Eagles highlights on the iPad, took a couple of good naps, and made the quickest recovery.

Owen turns bright red when he gets fevery and his fevers burn HOT. Also, his temper. He was attempting to do LEGOs with Grandpa and had to be forcibly removed from the table, then took a sweaty and deathlike nap with Julie lying next to him to keep him from getting up, and then went right back to the LEGO set, relapsed, and repeated.

Felix is just gross. I've always been disgusted by the term "snot-nosed kid," but that's exactly what he is. It's the sort of term you use for someone else's child, some child you see in the supermarket who inspires no familial loyalty or affection, but only a deep-seated revolt at their animal filthiness. The past couple of days I've immediately gone to "snot-nosed kid" when I've looked at my youngest, despite the family loyalty and affection that ties us together and enables him to treat my wardrobe like his own personal tissue collection.

So, no triumphal entry into the New Year. We didn't stay up to watch the ball drop, and didn't even stay the length of our usual visit to Pennsylvania. We're back home now and watching way more than our usual share of movies. (Sick kids, by the way, are even more emotional than usual. Watching Disney movies can be exhausting with them.) But things are looking up. We have boxes full of generous and thoughtful Christmas gifts to unpack, we're in no hurry to throw out the tree, and it isn't even too snowy out. 

Since I've already posted at least part of this list once before I'm going to resist the temptation to break it into a separate blog (hurray for blogging more in 2019!), so I am appending my list of 2019 books read to this cheerful plague song.

Jane and Prudence
We Need to Talk
The Satanic Verses
It Can't Happen Here
Crampton Hodnet
Lucky Jim
Chronicles of a Liquid Society
Montaigne in Barn Boots
The Zookeeper's Wife
The Great Halifax Explosion
Ab Urbe Condita Liber IV
The New Paris
Feel Free
Zone of Interest
Game of Thrones
White Teeth
The Undoing Project
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
The Pigeon Tunnel
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Dance with Dragons
The Mission Song
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Dinner
Coming Up for Air
Best. State. Ever.
The Sibyl (Lagerkvist)
The Better Angels of Our Nature
The Happiness Hypothesis
Outliers
C.S. Lewis (McGrath)
The Handmaid's Tale
Into Thin Air
What Should We Be Worried About?
Year of No Sugar
The Woman in Cabin 10
A Raisin in the Sun
Being Mortal
The Righteous Mind
Man's Search for Meaning
Jurassic Park
Empire Falls
The Stuff of Thought
The Man in the High Castle
The Billion Dollar Spy
Goodbye, Things
The Seven Storey Mountain
The Good Earth
The Martian
Hidden Figures
Cat's Cradle
The Nightingale
Pirate Latitutdes
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Blood in the Water
Brady vs. Manning
World Without End
Player Piano
Notes From a Small Island
Behave (Sapolsky)
Orchard and Vineyard
Breakfast of Champions
A Column of Fire
Wilfrid Cumbermede
A Shropshire Lad
Barbarian Days
The Well at World's End
Zuleika Dobson
Where Men Win Glory
Missoula
Into the Wild
Grocery
Friendfluence
An American Sickness