Sick Socks

I need to send the greatest internet shout-out ever to my friend, Tracey for her post yesterday. It was perfect timing. I'm one of the many people that Tracey had recommended this treatment to a while back. It is known as the "Wet Sock Treatment", but around these parts, they're known as "Sick Socks". I can't believe that I forgot about "sick socks". They were what got us through our usual tri-annual sick phases last year in record time. Our first tri-annual sick phase is when it starts warming up and things start growing and the pollen is thick in the air. Our second tri-annual sick phase is now, when things start cooling off, dying, and decomposing. Our third tri-annual sick phase is when we start the wood stove (our primary source of heat). Each phase lasts about 3 weeks each. Last year it was maybe a week each, and we avoided Beanbag's tri-annual visit to the ER for croup. How could I forget something so detrimental to our well-being? I'm going to blame it on my post-partum mama brain (or lack thereof). For the past week or two we've all been experiencing a sniffle here, a cough there, a few sinus headaches, a twinge of a sore throat, but yesterday, Bird got sent home from school with a fever. I have to be quite honest with you, fevers freak me out. I only have 3 kinds of over the counter medicine readily available in my home: homeopathic eardops, homeopathic cough syrup (for Beanbag's croup, which also freaks me out), and Tylenol for every age group. After reading Tracey's post, I was reminded of the first time she had told me about "sick socks". Everyone in my house had been sick for about two weeks with no end in sight. Bean had just started barking, Bird was throwing up, and I had the worst headache (it may have been because I was sick or it could have been from listening to Sug complain about how sick he was, either way). I have been friends with Tracey for years and although some of the stuff she comes up with may seem a little off the wall, they are very rarely wrong. So, I collected clean white cotton socks for all of us, the hard part was the wool socks for the kiddos. Besides ordering them from L.L.Bean (which don't have them, but Rugged Bear does), I couldn't think of a place, locally that would sell such things, so I headed out to our local Salvation Army store and bought a wool sweater. I cut off each sleeve and made two pairs of kids wool socks out of them. They may not be pretty, but they work. We all hated putting the ice cold wet socks on our feet, but by morning, when they were dry and we felt better (and slept so well) there was no going back. Yesterday when I picked Bird up at school she had a temperature of 100.8 (30 minutes after being given Tylenol). She was asleep on the floor when I went to pick her up and she continued to sleep until 6:30 when I woke her up to eat something. I then gave her a bath and set the "sick socks" to work. She immediately fell back to sleep. Bird woke up this morning with a a temperature of 100.0, but she's feeling much better. I will be using them again tonight and keeping her home from school again tomorrow, but Thursday...it's on. Thanks again Tracey.