And if I offend, please keep in mind that it was not my intent.

You see, I'm feeling a little under the weather. Oh, who am I kidding. I'm sick. My nose is plugged, my body's aching and I just want to lay down and sleep. Except sleep is hard to come by, as anyone knows when your sick.

You get to know a person real well when he or she is sick. Me, I know I'm a grump — just keep bringing me the Gatorade and hot soup and we'll get along just fine.

I usually throw several blankets on the bed, break out DVDs of old sitcoms and curl up for the long haul. However, please don't make loud noises or expect me to make any sort of rational decision about anything. Those are annoyances that I just cannot abide.

And what is it about a sick kid that makes me almost tolerate them? Is it because they are too exhausted to break anything?

But here I am at work. I've got to get stuff done and taking time off to lay around at home is not in the game plan. I'm not alone in that, you know. I tried to look up on the Internet numbers of people who go to work sick, but ended up muddling through studies on paid sick leave and my mind started to shut down.

What I gathered, though, is that a lot of people don't have paid sick time and therefore can't take a day or two off without losing money. That isn't the case around here, where we have a very generous sick leave policy and I encourage anyone who is sick to take some time off.

My feeling has always been that if you take off, the risk of infecting others in the office is less. But I have a dedicated staff here who feel the need to be at their desks working instead of watching soap operas and getting plenty of fluids. I'm not sure where they get this attitude.

Needless to say, I'm not worried about them picking up whatever I've got because it's been through everyone here. It's unusual that I was the last one to get the bug because I'm the only one in the office with small school children, who, as we all know, are little germ factories looking to infect the nearest person. And parents know that their little ones, when they are sick, demand more hugs and such making our chances of getting infected even greater.

Experts say that you shouldn't go to work sick because it will end up costing your company more money in the long run, I think because you will infect everybody.

But there is incredible pressure in the American workplace to be at work, whether you are sick or not.

Everyone knows someone who takes too much sick time and we all know the workplace martyr who will never take a day off. We all have deadlines and with the economy the way it is, we don't want to give the boss any reason to look at us when it comes time to make cuts. Of course, I'm now one of those bosses and I'm not bothered in the slightest when someone calls in sick. You just work around it.

I had a basketball coach once who would constantly remind his players that no one was indispensable and that there were players who normally rode the bench (me) who would fill in at a moments notice. Fine advice, but when it translates into the work world, it comes out as "make yourself indispensable and they can't get rid of you," which is what most people, including myself, think.

No one can edit this newspaper except me, I tell myself. I am too much the genius and if I took a sick day, things would fall to pieces. The truth is that things would somehow get done. But that's no small comfort, things should fall apart when I'm not there. I'm needed. We all want to be needed and no one can do our jobs like we can. Right?

You see what a mind fogged over by too many doses of decongestant can do to you?

So as you can see, this week's paper got done and you are reading it. As you read this I'm hopefully laying in bed in NyQuil stupor watching reruns of "Seinfeld."

If not, I'm probably at work.

Contact McClannahan at 823-7102 or online at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .