Still Ill?

So as The Pope prepared for his first visit to the USA, Britney crashed her car again, Gordon Brown faltered, The World Bank warned against food shortages, Prince wrote another song about me, butterflies spread their wings on mountain sides in Malaysia, and tigers yawned in India...mrs househusbandnot got sick.

Which in the grand scheme of things should not be such a big deal. But in this scale of things it is. You see, mrs hhn - when ill - turns into a bloke. She lies in bed or on a sofa, hating the world that made her (him) ill, lashing out at anything and anybody (that would be me btw) that comes within lashing at range. She makes mad demands like wanting tea and fish soup at the same time, hates the world some more, and explains that technically no-one has ever been in such abject pain as she is.

This would be okay if I reciprocated with the gender reversals at this stage. But I don't. I can't. I remain resolutely male, bored by other people's illness, angered after the first three demands for tea/soup, irritated by the detritus of the patient (tissues, apple cores, empty mugs etc.), and constantly reminding myself that actually this is not real pain, not pain like I have felt in my life as a sick man.

So what with the staring down of each other, the quiet and not so quiet sulks, the general butlering around after the corpse on the sofa, the recognition that I am a crap nurse (which annoys me, and annoys mrs hhn), and the utter tedium of watching someone being ill, not a great weekend really. I have escaped to the office this morning to let mrs hhn continue her man illness alone.