The boys gave Jonathan and I their cold. It brought us to our knees, by far the worst one either of us have ever had. Jonathan got it first and complained I wasn’t being sympathetic enough with his high fever, nausea, and general malaise.

“Let’s measure this alleged raging fever,” I said, coming at him with the boys’ thermometer. It was exactly 98.7.

“Obviously it’s broken,” said Jonathan.

“It measured the boys’ fever just fine this week. You clearly do not have a fever.”

“My brain! It hurts! Ouch!” he moaned.

Two mornings later – when I joined him in the throes of illness – he asked what the mess was on the floor beside our bed.

“All the tissues I used during the night.”

He looked around and proclaimed the area “a biohazard.”

Later that day I had the misfortune to come across a blogger swearing by a hydrogen peroxide remedy for colds and sinus infections. I just had to mix the peroxide half and half with water and snort into my nose, then spit out, then repeat once an hour for three hours. She warned that it stung and to only do it on children old enough to understand that a little pain now could mean big relief a few hours later.

• Snort, snort.
• A mild tingling sensation in my nostrils.
• An uncomfortable burning in my inner nose areas.
• This must be what it’s like to snort cocaine, I think.
• Excruciating pain, like I was slowly dipping my sinuses into a vat hot lava.
• Tears were running down my face as I blew my nose forty times to get it out, out, out!

I did it again an hour later.

It was worse knowing what was going to come.

It didn’t help one whit.

Later Jonathan remarked that this was the longest we'd ever felt so bad in our lives.  I gave him a withering look.  "Well, except for you," he said.