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I actually don’t know if it was Influenza or something else but everyone in the floating home office got sick in the past week except Richard.
Our Managing Editor, Brian, fell first. He stoically came to work anyway but I told him to quickly disembark, and to take some sick days to convalesce on his boat. I was a nice boss. I delivered dinners to him so he wouldn’t have to cook. I would jump on his boat, holding my breath, drop a warm, covered plate of healthy food in his cockpit, and holler “dinner time!” Then, I’d jump right back off again.
Two days later, Max was down for the count. And, two days after that, I was slingin’ snot and coughing up my lungs as well. Richard and Mason, sensing imminent discomfort and danger, headed down to Bradenton, to our daughter and son-in-law’s house…where our daughter was just starting to notice a sore throat. She hadn’t been around us so we didn’t know if it was the same thing or something different. She eventually started coughing as well.
And, two days later, Mason came down with a sore throat, a cough, and a fever. Richard didn’t want to put our grandson, Jack, in danger so he packed up Mason, and brought him back to our satellite office in St. Pete, which has sleeping quarters for emergencies…like, you know, flu season and HURRICANES! I gave him a list of things to buy for Mason: Soft tissues, cough drops, Mucinex (gentler than Nyquil, but just as effective if you want to sleep a bit instead of coughing all night), Chamomile tea bags, and extra C and D vitamins.
As of today, Brian, Max, and I all have residual runny noses and coughing, but no fever. I still wake up coughing several times each night. I sit up, drink some water, pop a cough drop in my mouth, wait for it to dissolve, and then lie back down to sleep. I woke up this morning to find a big, red glob on my pillow. At first, I freaked out, thinking I’d coughed up blood in my sleep. But, no. On closer inspection, I discovered it was a half melted cherry cough drop. Apparently, while half asleep, I laid back down with the cough drop still in my mouth and I guess it drooled of my mouth it out at some point. Gross!
I peeled it off the pillow case with a tissue, put the pillow case in the laundry bag, and got up to start my day. It’s VERY dangerous to lie down with a cough drop in your mouth. My ex-husband choked badly on a cough drop once and I had to give him the Heimlich Maneuver.
Mason’s fever broke last night but he’s still coughing. I’m no longer contagious so I’m hanging out at the office with Mason today, working and watching videos with him. He is hoping to recover because he and Max have a church camping trip this weekend. They are super excited about that! I am hoping to recover as well because I have FEMA training this weekend so I can help out locally when, you know, the next hurricane hits.
And, Richard is still completely healthy! Not sure how he escaped the floating home office pandemic but we’re sooooo glad he was available for frequent trips to the grocery store and CVS!
NEXT: One WILD Toilet Ride!!!
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Angela Hoy is a publisher, a blogger, and the author of 19 books. She lived on dirt her entire life before her family gave away almost everything they owned, and moved onto a 52-foot Irwin Center Cockpit Ketch. They all live, work, and play on board full-time.
Angela is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, a free source of paying markets for freelance writers and photographers. If you want to write for magazines, websites, businesses, or others, check it out. It’s free! Her publishing services company, BookLocker.com, has published more than 9,000 books over the past 18 years. If you want to publish a book, she’d love to hear from you! Abuzz Press is BookLocker’s hybrid publishing company. And, PubPreppers.com offers services to authors who are having their books published elsewhere.