By Beck
It will be March Break in slightly over a week, which fills me with ominous foreboding. We have an unfortunate health history regarding March Break, and while I think it’s largely coincidence, another part of me believes pretty firmly that we have some sort of March Break Curse. Let’s see the proof!
1) Last year: we all got a really virulent stomach bug.
2) 2007: The Baby had a virulent stomach bug and ended up being hospitalized overnight.
3) 2006: This Is The Time I Almost Died. And my kids had Scarlet Fever.
4) 2005: Not blogging; still sick. Oh, and hugely pregnant, too. That was AWESOME.
I’m going to skip a bunch of years and just bring you to:
5) 1980 or 1981: I caught a really virulent stomach bug and NEARLY DIED and ended up in the hospital for… the entire March Break.
There’s more, but you get my point.
I’m sickly, obviously, and I’m lucky that I’m not in some Victorian novel where I’d be stuck being a wizened, imperious, bed-ridden invalid. But I think it’s also obvious that March has it in for me. And I don’t know why, since I like the idea of March in theory and am deeply thrilled by the melting snow and promise of spring that it brings. It’s over, though – like one of those times when you realize that someone you’d thought of as a friend secretly didn’t think much of you, secretly was rooting against you. NICE, March.
It’s funny how superstitiuous almost anyone is, when you scratch them. On an intellectual level, I KNOW that what’s going on has more to do with winter-weakened immune systems and the last roar of the winter viruses, but on an emotional level, I’m totally convinced that some March holds a dark secret anniversary, my very last day. Of course, my paternal grandmother lived to a ripe, sickly old age convinced of many similar things, and I have old bones, I’ve been told.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s almost March break and I need to stock up on gingerale and popsicles. And March? I don’t like you anymore.
Beck blogs at Frog And Toad Are Still Friends.
well, with all the joy and happiness March has brought, it’s no wonder that you don’t love it…
“I’m totally convinced that some March holds a dark secret anniversary, my very last day.”
pithy and chilling indeed 🙂
I always laugh when you refer to yourself as sickly. Not laughing at the fact that you are in fact, apparently, sickly — just the way to which you refer to it.
I think that you should give it one of those old-fashioned names — you know suffer from consumption or get a case of the vapors or something.
Here’s to a healthy March 2009.
My birthday is in March, and I had enough parties canceled due to blizzards that I’ve conveniently forgotten all the nice birthdays and insist that EVERY YEAR we get a major blizzard in time for my birthday, because March is Out To Get Me. So I am with you. The year that we skip straight from February to April, I will do a nice little happy dance. Even if it means we skip my birthday.
Drink Welch’s grape juice all month long, every day. It makes the intestinal environment inhospitable to the virus that causes “stomach flu.”
It only works preventatively, or when started right after you’ve been exposed. Once you’re already sick, it won’t get rid of it. But if someone in your family does come down with it, have the rest of you start drinking it immediately. Once I found out about this (from a woman with 10 kids), it never ran through my family again. It’s a wonderful thing.
Again, if I were you, I’d just start drinking it every day now because it does work for prevention. Good luck! Hope it’s a better month for you.
March does seem like an awful month for sicknesses. Course, February wasn’t great either. Hmmm.
Hope the curse is broken for you this year. 🙂
March is the WORST for illness, I think. I don’t think there is anything scientific about this, but something about the changing seasons makes the sickliness worse. My son’s school is now hosting some horrid 10 day high fever virus that both my kids had.
I am tempting fate by chaperoning a first grade field trip tomorrow! Bring it, March!
If you were in a Victorian novel you would totally be cast as young, thoughtful Rebecca, so full of wit and promise but relegated to bed due to her affliction with the consumption.
What is consumption anyhow? Pneumonia? I always wondered.
I think you just need a jump rope…worked for Mary Lennox
This is how I feel about Tuesdays (Bluesdays).
DUMB curse!
Don’t almost die this March. Please.
Old bones?…to match your old soul. Keeping fingers crossed.
March is one big tease of a month. It seems like it should be spring, but really it is always so snowy and cold. I am superstitious too – I am a science/numbers girl but I really believe in the zodiac. Like if someone tells me their sign I actually think I know a lot about them!
You have a built in excuse if the kids ever agitate for a March break at Disney World! See? I’m trying to be very Polly Anna like. Is it helping?
Is it sad that I’m looking forward to March because my favourite television shows are coming back with new episodes? I’m so sad. Sad and housebound. Sad and housebound, but Polly Anna-esque.
February is for me what March is for you; I sympathize. But now my Feb. is over, and soon your March will be, too! 🙂
I always thought T.S. Eliot had it wrong–April isn’t the cruelest month after all.
This is the year, Beck. The year March will go well. And now I will sing “Sunshine Day” by The Brady Bunch.
Ha! Your grim forebearance is very noble. 🙂
Is this the right time to say, “Beware the Ides of March” as my Mom always did on March 15?
I’m not a big fan of March. It’s long and it’s winter and it’s gray and bleh.
I caught a stomach virus when 8 months prego with my 2nd child. Intestinal cramps while carrying what ended up being a 9 pound 9 ounce boy – SO NOT FUN!!
You have my sympathies!
I’m a bit wary of the promise of spring that March seems to bring. I don’t think that it’s really spring, it’s just a trick to weaken my defenses. Everybody around me expects to be wearing short-sleeved tees outside anytime soon while I’m still in long johns. they on the other hand a re equally convinced that Ester break is for skiing. Me thinks you can’t have it both ways.
Some day, FAR FAR in the future, you’ll die, an elegant and wise old woman….during March break. And your husband can have put on your tombstone (if a previous March hasn’t already claimed him), “She always knew March would have it’s way in the end.”
I hope this March is better for you! I also thought of “Beware the ides of March” from Julius Caesar as I was reading your post. I’m sure yours won’t be as bad as his was!
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