Sick-Abed-Two-Chairs

I've been down for the last week with a bad cold my husband gave me. Since I was a little girl, about once a year, I get a bad cold with a lingering dry cough that takes weeks to go away and literally banishes me to the couch so that I don't keep Bill up. Having asthma doesn't help things either. That's been my story all this week. I missed a day of work and slept over 12 hours on Monday night but laying low has been good.

While sick though I've remembered something my dad says with some regularity. First of all, whenever I call him, the first thing I say when he answers the phone is "what are you doing" and the first thing he says back is "talking on the phone". This is the normal exchange for us both and has been probably since mom died in 2000. Sometimes I'll ask "how are you feeling?" Just a general question or maybe because I know he had been sick with a cold, etc. The "pat" answer is always "I'm sick abed two chairs" - While I've always suspected that means something relating to illness, I've never asked so today I decided to google the phrase and learned that it's part of an old song called "On Top of Fool's Hill" with the first verse going like this:

Sick-abed-two chairs Grandma said,
I think it's settlin' in my chest,
A terrible cold, the girl's out of control,
I can never get a minute's rest.

The other thing I learned about the phrase is that the expression was used as a "tongue in cheek" response to questions about one's health or to imply that someone is pretending to be ill or is slightly unwell. Apparently, it has a midwestern origin (specifically North Dakota - which is where Dad was raised) and the idea would seem to be that you were slightly out of sorts, not enough to make you take to your bed but enough to make you want to sit in a chair with your feet up on another, or to sit close enough to the fire that your feet could, figuratively, rest on the box of logs. Interesting huh?

Anyway, I was "sick abed two chairs" this week but now am feeling better.