I have spent most of today hiding from Wife, Little Miss and Usurper. Not because I don’t love them or anything like that, quite the opposite, I would argue that I am trying to avoid them because I DO love them.

You see the three of them have been passing illnesses back and forth between each other for the last week or so. The minute one gets better the next one develops the same illness that is everyone else is trying to recover from.

Up until now I have been largely immune from this cycle of disease. This is not die to any super human like abilities or due to a radioactive spider bite or anything. It has simply been the only upside of my absence from the home front die to work for these last few months.

Today of course not only was I not flat out at work, I was not in fact even at work and spent the day at home. I had planned to hide by filling in the days cutting grass or weeding the garden - something that kept me in view and therefore gave the impression of interaction even while I was in hiding. But alas that wasn’t to be and Wife insisted that the toddler Little Miss and I go and buy some supplies at the local shops before we were reduced to eating the weakest in the heard to survive.

This presented a problem as pondered the prospect of spending a couple of hours in close quarters with a sickly but recovering toddler while trying to avoid any germs.

Then a plan slipped into my little mind - promote the girl from toddler to loyal offsider and have her do a whole bunch of tasks to keep occupied and not demanding to be carried.

So Little Miss proved her use for one by:
1. pushing the shopping trolley all by herself - she only knocked over one other shopper (and they seemed to be a cranky person anyway so who cares?)

2. grabbed things off the lower shelves and hurled them in the trolley. Sure this lead to a lamb roast landing on a carton of eggs - but at least I didn’t get any diseases.

3. When she began to tire of that I told her she could pick anything she wanted and put it in the trolley - no questions asked!!! This made for a very interesting discussion between Wife and I about some of the unusual items I purchased, but with her being sick as well she didn’t push the issue.

4. Finally I just bought her some smarties which she sat in the trolley and ate. And when she has smarties there is no way she is going to let me get close enough that I might steal one (or catch her disease).

All in all it was a very successful little outing, and no chance that I caught anything off her on this trip.

Sadly though I think my cunningness was wasted because as I type I have broken out into a cold sweat, so either I am coming down with something, or I have a sixth sense and Wife is about to get very angry at me. Now I am not sure which will be worse.