Sometimes shaking a bug is nearly impossible. I feel like I’ve been put on a biological terror alert by my brain that’s as vague and unfocused as those the government is now issuing.

“This is the brain. We have uncorroborated reports that SOMETHING is going to happen between the vicinity of the head and toes sometime between January 1 and December 31. Do not panic. Go about your business. But be vigilant!”

I don’t know if I’m better or not. Every time I think I’m better my body reminds me that . . . well . . . I’m not. I’ll come crashing down into exhaustion so complete that even my clothes feel brittle and dry.

But, I’ll try to get back to my regular publishing schedule next week. I’ve had a ton of topics I wanted to cover this week, but most of them were lost in the haze of fever.

Really, I promise a return to normal next week. But, for now, I leave you for this weekend with this piece of familial pastiche.

Today was the bubble extravaganza at Matilda’s school. I was up until 11 p.m. last night creating a bubble solution that would amaze and amuse a mass throng of six and seven year olds for thirty minutes.

I felt like a mad scientist finding the formula to raise a zombie army. “Mwhahaha! Add glycerin. Yes. Yes! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS.”

Of course, moronic me didn’t consider the fact that these kids would be more interested in slinging the solution at one another in an attempt to blind little Johnny or Susie. It’s survival of the fittest . . . or cruelest in first grade.

The whole event went off well, for the most part. It was raining, so we go shoved underneath a little bridge in order to protect ourselves from getting wet. Which, of course was pointless. Between having kids with more soap and water on them than had been applied in their previous evening’s bath time coming up and hugging me and the fact that the humidity level was at 80000%, I was soaking wet. Lost another four pounds of fat in addition to the six pounds I lost from the flu.

My lovely daughter, however, was the picture of grace and ease. She moved through the bubble stations like a pro (of course, she had been our guinea pig) and didn’t viciously attack anyone with my precisely concocted bubble solution, nor did she drink any of it (several kids did . . . and subsequently imitated the cartoons we grew up with by hiccupping water and bubbles for an hour).

By far, the most interesting and adventurous group we had was a group of hard of hearing kids. Not only were they amazingly well behaved, but these kids had a little flame of scientist in their hearts. Despite the myriad of tools we had provided, this group discovered a new way of using the tools. They taught me how to use my own hands to make bubbles and there was a sheer joy in each discovery they made. You could almost hear the neurons making connections right in front of you. There was a crack and sizzle of brain activity occurring.

The teachers turned out to be of no help at all. And I don’t blame them a bit. I think that, after the entire school year, they were thrilled to have other people on the receiving end of the kids’ abuse. Every day they are the ones who get tapioca in their hair, vomit on their shoes and urine on their carpet because someone was afraid to ask to go to the bathroom. These teachers deserve combat pay from May until the end of the school year. These kids know that summer vacation is around the corner and, despite the fact that half of them go to camp, summer school or other organized activities; the last month of school becomes an exercise in personal freedom.

Do math? You can’t make me. Stop torturing Jimmy by putting bubble solution in his eyeball and asking him to call me master? No!

When did this start happening? Since when is summer an extension of school? When I was a kid, summer was a disorganized mess of swimming, getting dirty and watching subpar television in the frigid comfort of forced air. The kids who went to summer camp were freaks whose parents clearly didn’t love them.

Of course, the greatest moment for me today was when I dropped by my daughter’s class afterward, caked in a soapy slime. They were reading a story as a group and I didn’t want to interrupt. She saw me in the hallway, waved and, using proper sign language, signed “thank you.”