This Little Piggy...

I am trying to determine if I am over-paranoid (as opposed to just regular paranoid) about Swine Flu these days.

I asked Carter if there were lots of kids missing from school yet and he responded, "Oh yeah, Mom. They're dropping like flies." I hope they are just dropping from the attendance rolls and not permanently out of commission.

The schools -- everywhere around here anyway -- will hold H1N1 vaccination clinics sometime in the coming weeks. But I'm wondering if that'll be too late. I already had a co-worker and his 2 kids get it last week. Now the neighbor boy across the street has it. My girlfriend's kids have strep and they hope that is all.

I am washing my hands every half hour it seems and I find myself pausing to diagnose every feeling. Am I hot? Cold? Is my throat too dry? Is this just a normal stress headache?

I really, really hope this bypasses our household -- mainly for 2 reasons. 1) Who the heck likes to be sick? 2) We've got a busy weekend planned, including scrapbooking all day Saturday and a party Sunday to celebrate my dad's birthday and my nephew's "visit" home from Iraq. I don't want to miss that!

So I'll just ignore these paranoia-based phantom symptoms and hope they'll go away. Now, if I can just get Carter to stop kissing all those girls, we'd be in good shape. For today anyway.