Woman Flu

It is 27 degrees outside and my family and the other animals are larking around in the garden. I am watching it from my vantage point beneath a tent of towel, bent over a steaming bowl of boiling water. It's not hot enough outside for me; I have created my own sauna in the kitchen.
"Whatcherdoin'?" asks Small Boy, careering into the kitchen with his Lavender Pekin in one hand and a handful of grass in the other. "Is it an 'xperiment, cos if it is, can I have a go?"
"NO!" I croak. "It is NOT an experiment. I've got a cold."
"Oh no! Not AGAIN!" my sympathetic son groans. "You are ALWAYS getting colds!"
I wonder why, I think darkly, remembering the previous week which entailed doling out hankies and paracetamol to snot-filled children, who mope around snuffling for a mere 24 hours and then bounce out of bed bright-eyed and full of insolence the second it's all over.
Husband comes in, takes one glance at my shivery, sweaty appearance and delivers the most withering of looks. "Go to bed," he commands. "You're useless draped about the place like a wet fish."
I think more dark thoughts about a past conversation that involve the words "man flu" and "why the hell don't you take the day off work" but decide that going to bed is less exhausting than being a martyr, and it is far too much of an effort to attain the moral high ground from my current position. And so I obey.
From my bed I can hear the birds singing merrily, in blissful ignorance that it is actually October and not a great time to start mating and building nests again. I can also hear Daughter and Small Boy engaged in a vicious argument over whose turn it is to go on Sims and look after the virtual mother who is virtually sick.
I cough lamely in the hope they might come and tend their real mother who is really sick, but if they hear me, they don't react.
Psycho Cat stalks into the room, her body language even twitchier than normal. She jumps on to the bed, landing heavily on my chest, setting off another coughing fit and shoves her face into mine. She has the worst breath of any living creature I have yet to meet, and that is saying something since the dog's most favoured snacks contain things I cannot bring myself to write about in my delicate state. "Roooawoooow!" she complains, digging her claws into me for good measure. I cannot help but think she hasn't come to keep me company or worry about my welfare.
"Muuu-um!" Small Boy comes in, clutching Husband's iPod in his sweaty little hand. "I have to show you this. It's soooo funny!"
I try to explain that my head is banging and that I really cannot look at a small brightly lit screen just now.
"No, but seriously, really you have to see it!" he persists, shoving the screen at me. At least it doesn't smell of rotting mouse carcass, I think.
Small Boy proceeds to show me endless clips from YouTube of Asdf movies. For the uninitiated, these are cartoons of stick men saying, for example, "Look, I've baked you a pie!" "Oh boy! What flavour is it?" "Pie Flavour!" This has Small Boy rolling around on the floor in hysterics and quoting the sketches back to me over and over and over again until I feel I must be hallucinating.
I dutifully watch all the clips nonetheless and finish by realising that, no, I am not hallucinating.
I am just sick.
And old.
Very sick and very very old.