Post-Vacation Sucker Punch

I'm sick, people. I'm very, very sick. I'm sick in the head is what I am.

Jonathan came down with a crazy-bad head cold during the last three days of our Florida trip. He was a trooper, doing Busch Gardens by day, but walking into our hotel room each dinnertime with an announcement of, "I'm tired. I don't feel good. I'm going to bed." And he burrowed under the covers 3.5 seconds later, not to emerge until the following day. By our last day in Florida, there was a slight burning in my chest - which is a good sign of, um, nothing good.

I'm sure it had nothing to do with Jonathan handing me his dirty tissues for 3 days straight, tissues he is apparently incapable of disposing of himself despite my 3-step instructional tutorial I freely offered every chance I got.

"First, honey, you wrap up the boogers in the tissue. No, YOU do it, they're YOUR boogers. Then, sweety, you throw the tissue away. No, not on my lap, in the trash can. And Boo, you need to wash your hands. Yes, you do. Yes. You do. Please. Please?"

But as we all know, it is written in the fine print that mothers are obligated to handle all bodily functions no matter how gooey, and so I stuffed my backpack with 8,283 tissues and followed Jonathan around, ready to prevent as much projectile mucous-sharing as I could.

I was talking a bit with Kelly about penance. To punish myself for my shameless bragging that I was in a warm place when most of you weren't (excepting Joanne, who had the foresight to simply move to said warm place rather than continually moan about wanting to live in said warm place - what a concept!), I did a bit of jogging to flog myself for it. I do not like to jog. I especially do not like to jog at 10:30 am when it is already so humid in Florida that breathing is like sticking your face into a sauna the size of a ziplock bag. But the road was flat and my running shoes were packed (Whatever was I thinking?) and I had to find a way to stop the osmotic absorption of nine restaurant dinners into my thigh tissue, so I laced my sneakers and took off.

But Kelly kindly pointed out (too late) that penance is not usually necessary as karma will inevitably take care of things. Thanks, Kelly, thanks for the timeliness of your message. Really.

So here I am, propped up in front of my computer, only because if I have to lay prone for one more second I fear my back muscles will contort beyond the point of no return, wrapped in the biggest comforter I could find, with a scarf wrapped around my neck, a box of tissues (my third) at the ready, a steady stream of hot tea (thanks to sweet Jonathan who fills my cup and asks, "Can I get anything for you? A sandwich?"), and doing shots of anything I can find in Rob's homemade pharmacy which promises relief anywhere in the upper half of my body. Usually I am fairly openly hostile about Rob's love for over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, insisting most things need to run their course and his body would heal itself if he'd just let it. But not today. When I woke at 4am, sure I had pneumonia and obsessing about how drowning in my own mucus will be such a horrible way to die, I suddenly became willing to drink or swallow anything with "relief" written on the label and tasting like toxic-cherry-bubble gum-waste. And how's that working for me you ask? Well, I now have an acid stomach, which does, believe or not, sometimes take my focus off the feeling that my sinus cavities are about to do an Old Faithful any minute now.

I don't know if it's being in a house of boys that does it, but the bedside manner 'round here is just so-so, with Brady asking, "Oh, you're sick?" despite my incessant moaning from the couch region of the house, and Rob telling me to "Go lay down!" like I'm a dog or something. He does do a pretty amazing infomercial for all the OTC drugs we have in our house, most of which I've never seen much less used myself. I wonder if we put him on youtube he'll get royalties or something? "Side effects may include severe dizziness, abdominal bleeding, divorce papers served by your wife's cutthroat attorney, and uncontrollable wheezing. Ask your doctor if MucusBeGone is right for you."

And, of course, there's the especially nasty karmic sting that we always get sick on weekends, when we're given the unattractive choice between suffering (and panicking during my late-night irrational bouts of "I think I'm going to die. Rob." nudge nudge "No really, I think I'm dying. I'm drowning in my own phlegm. I think my lungs are filling up. Rob." nudge nudge poke) and paying three thousand times more to see a doctor who's surely not covered by any insurance plan within a hundred-mile radius and who will give you that look that says, "Ya, you and every other hypochondriac in here is doing to die this very minute," followed by, "I think it's a virus, go home and go to bed and if you get any worse between now and Monday (but we all know miraculous recoveries are pre-scheduled for 8am on Monday mornings), call an ambulance or something. That'll be 3 gazillion dollars, please."

Ok, I'm done whining. For now. I'm going to go do head-stands on the couch in hopes of unplugging my left ear (which has been plugged since yesterday and is going to drive me ape-sh*t-mad anysecondnow), snort salt water ala neti-pot-style, down another gallon of my homemade concoction of cayenne pepper, honey, and apple cide vinegar, and continue telling Rob to stop talking to me like I'm a dog.

But I hope you, my lovely friends, are having a delightful, snot-free day and a good chuckle at my throw-down loss to karma and her bad-*ss peeps.

I deserve it, I guess.