Alex has been sick lately.

Not really sick.

Just a little bit sick.

Which I have found is worse.

When Alex is really sick, he doesn’t say anything.

He is sort of stoically silent and just slips off to bed.

When he is only a little bit sick, he is whiny.

You’d think he was dying the way he goes on about having a cold.

I arrived home from work on Tuesday to find him sitting on the couch wrapped up in blankets, surrounded by dirty tissues.

“I’mb sic,” were the first words he uttered to me.

“Can youd geb meb a cub ov tea?”

Being the supportive wife, I not only make him a cup of tea, I fix the blankets around his chest, clean up the tissues and put the remote a little closer (he was having trouble moving the 30cm to pick it up off the table) and head out to find something for dinner.

I come home 20 minutes later to find him still wrapped up in blankets, surrounded by more dirty tissues and his head slumped against a pillow.

“I’mb hungbry,” he tells me.

“Whab for dinner?”

He is so sick that he refuses any medication and only grudgingly agrees to take a vitamin C tablet when I threaten him with divorce.

“It’b taste fubby,” he tells me, making the same face my cat does when I force worming medicine down her throat.

“I’b dob lik ib.”

Strangely though he rallies enough to be able to eat a steak, followed by two bowls of pasta.

He is also well enough to stay up and watch some more Olympics and annoy me while I try and get some work done.

After another couple of cups of tea, some water and finally some Panadol, he decides to go to bed, but not before he had secured a hot water bottle from me.

He also needed some hugs, a wiping of his brow and three pillows before he was ready to sleep.

After such a display of general sickness I came home yesterday expecting to find him passed out on the couch with his hand stretching for the phone in a last ditch effort to call for help.

Instead he is laughing on the phone to a friend about how cool the BMX at the Games has been and how he now thinks he’ll get a BMX himself.

“Yeah, I’ve been a little sick lately, I had that cold and Ames wouldn’t stop fussing, but I’m fine now,” I overhear.

“She kept trying to shove these orange things down me and I kept telling her I was fine, but you know women.”

Yes indeed. Us women like nothing better then looking after whining men.

Needless to say, he fixed his own dinner that night.