Staying awake long enough to write...

The children have resorted to guerrilla tactics to distract me from my writing goals this week. I've shaken off the 'flu, and reluctantly emerged from my blanket-cave on the sofa. When I was recuperating, I wasn't well enough to go to work (and my voice had deserted me), but I was well enough to put in some serious reading and writing time  - more than I've had since I became a mother, probably.

The children, perhaps sensing on some level that I was cavorting with another love in my life, stuck a stick through my spokes and have enthusiastically embraced my illness, spread it around amongst one another (such good sharing!) and are making it linger for as long as possible. Last night, at bedtime, three of them sat in a line, mouths agape for their dose of Calpol, and not one had a temperature below 39...then two of them spent the night needing Mummy (so precious to be needed, and to know that just your arms can make a little germ-grenade of a child calmer and happier). My other half gracefully decamped to the sofa, muttering about no sleep for five nights, and something about my snoring, so the children had extra space to twist and turn into their own sheet-cocoons. They elbowed me, deadened my arm lying on it, sneeze-blitzed my chest, and generally kept me awake most of the night.

And two of my self-imposed deadlines are looming on the horizon - thank goodness I got ahead of myself with my year of short stories, but I'd really like to enter these two other comps.Time to  buy more medication, I think, and then try some caffeine therapy for myself...