I feel like a wet sheep on a gloomy day

when I was a child I hated days like these - yesterday I was chatting to my friend Hughie on the big white telephone all morning and spent the afternoon sweating and shivering in bed with a proper job fever, of the kind one doesn't often have as an adult. Today I've been in that 'not better but not ill' space that children use to drive parents mad. Trouble is that I'm the parent today and my chidlren have been at school, so I've had to drive myself mad. What do you do when you have no energy to do anything and about 1500 things to do? Yes, you lie in bed and stare at the hilly bits on the covers and remember being ill as a child and wish your damn headache would go anyway and then get up and do too much for ten minutes and then collapse back into bed again...somewhere in that endless and senseless round I looked at the wet sheep and thought, yes, at least I'm not a sheep standing in the sleet.
Some good points: I found out how reliable, sensible and caring my children are. They were so good yesterday and managed so well without me. Everything got done, even without my reminding. The littles fed all the animals before they went to school, they came home and cooked their own lunch and even managed to clean up after themselves, they brough me tea and an apple (which even got washed because they know I do that for them), littlest phoned a friend and asked to play there so I could rest and, before she went, she brought me a cool cloth for my head. One thought of buying bread on the way home from school as I wouldn't be able to bake.
And I found out that I have learnt to stop, to be ill and to be taken care of.
Even though it was a horrible day, it was also a lovely one. Now I just have to work up the courage to eat again and get rid of this damn headache.....