S'not Me

It has been one week since I reported my burgeoning cold symptoms and I can now safely say that we are in full swing.  It may even be that we have passed from the mere "common cold" stage and into something more dire that will eventually involve calling in some sort of specialist to excavate my sinuses.

Who do you call for that?  A plumber?  A miner?  I don't know.  The local phone listings have been less than helpful.  There isn't a heading for "worst head cold of the century" in there at all...

However, since I've somehow managed to survive to this point, I suppose I should take responsibility for this week's Wednesday Night Bullet Post.  If I have enough energy to whine and wheeze endlessly, I don't suppose I can claim to be too weak.

Here's what's going on in my tissue-filled corner of the world:

*Thank heaven this past weekend was of the three day variety.

*Columbus Day: Twenty four hours dedicated to a man's steadfast refusal to ask for directions.

*I needed the extra day.  Sleep was becoming something of a fond memory by week's end.

*Part of the problem was the antihistamines.  They make me jittery and it is hard to get just the right dosage and timing with those things.

*The other part of the problem was my not taking antihistamines.  Without them, I am a miserable mass of symptoms and that didn't work well for sleep either.

*I managed six hours on Friday night thanks to off-brand NyQuil.

*Of course, I went to bed at 9:00 so six hours meant a very early rising.

*After that it was back to sleeping two hours at a time if I was lucky and, by Sunday, I was bordering on idiocy.

*Went to visit my parents.

*And their new car.

*And some pork chops.  Which were very tasty and just the thing for a girl with a head cold.

*Mommy Sheep took me for a ride in the shiny red Mustang!

*She even offered to let me drive!

*But I couldn't because I was a sleep deprived idiot who would probably end up launching the shiny red Mustang through the display window of the local shopping center and that didn't seem like the right thing to do to the people who raised me and cared for me so very well.

*No sleep Sunday night either.  I was getting desperate.

*Thankfully, I was able to figure out the whole antihistamine to jitter ratio by Monday night and sleep enough to be functional come the workweek.

*Speaking of which...

*There.  Off-brand NyQuil administered.

*You may recall that all this seemed to start when Little Einstein showed up with a ball of his own used tissues and a desire to play catch with the staff.

*My original plan was to shun him or force him to wear a hat made from an empty Kleenex box and which bore the words, "I am a snotty child who shares too much."

*But the day after the snot ball incident, he received Part One of some devastating and life-changing  news.

*And then all I could do was look at him and say, "Oh, sweetie..."

*I'd rather hoped he'd have some time before the inevitable Part Two happened, but his mother called me yesterday afternoon with the bad news and that was that.

*Now he is just breaking my heart into tiny sodden bits and I can no more blame him for my horrible cold than I can kick a puppy.

*The Organized Teaching Assistant has the same cold only worse.

*The New Teaching Assistant doesn't have the cold at all, but she doesn't seem to want to hang around us as much anymore so I think she might have developed some kind of psychological disorder that makes her scared of co-workers or something...

*I had to go to a meeting this morning.  It was at a school waaaaaay out in the boonies and started at 8:00 this morning.

*To get to waaaaaaay out in the boonies, one has to leave at 7:00 in the morning.

*You'd think that would be bad, but I normally leave at just before 6:00 in the morning so it was actually kind awesome.

*Until it was time to find my way back to my own school from waaaaaay out in the boonies and then I got lost and ended up in New Hampshire.

*I don't want to talk about it...

*I was very late to school this morning.

*Sad news:  Alpha Betta, my long lived fish is no more.

*Two years, almost to the day.  That's a pretty good stretch for a fish.

*Especially one that didn't necessarily always enjoy regular bowl cleanings...

*He was a good fish.  I will miss him.

*It was a solemn burial at sea.  I was going to sing an ode or something but I have a horrible cold so I just sort of sniffled and blew my nose mournfully.

*Best I could do...

*My school pictures came today.  I have to get them taken because I have to update my security badge every year.

*And you know what?  I do not hate them.  They actually look kind of good.

*They remind me of those carefree days before I was stricken by the worst cold ever to hit a nose.

*I might get one of them blown up and wear it as a mask or something...

*My commuter novel these days is Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, Book 12).

*The series has taken many twists and turns and maybe isn't quite what it used to be but I still enjoy it.

*I would have sworn that I read Abarat at some point.  But then I doubted myself so I checked it out of the library just to be sure.

*I hadn't read it.  Now I am on the waiting list for book 2.

*Any book about a girl named Candy Quackenbush who hails from a town named for poultry is all right by me!

*I also finally picked up Whispers Under Ground, a book I've wanted to read for a while.

*Sadly, my snuffly state has prevented me from really enjoying it as bedtime reading.  I'm either too tired to focus or too busy blowing my nose to hold the iPad.

*From what I can tell, it is really very good, too.  So sad...

*Maybe I'll try it again when I'm less dribbly.



I think that is enough for tonight.  One more reference to my dripping nostrils and I'll probably lose the few readers I have left.  And it is really only a matter of time before I get to describing the wracking, hacking cough that sounds like I'm about to expel a lung or two and that can't help matters at all.

So I'll just go see about some dinner and enjoy the soon-to-be-kicking-in effects of my off-brand NyQuil.  Hopefully I'll be less with the symptoms next week and the conversation will be lighter.

Or I'll still have this stupid cold but then I can talk about how I'm a world record breaker so at least that will be nice...

SA