Starting The Year Off Wrong or Being A Walking Nyquil Ad

                Did you know that being sick sucks?  A lot?  Especially when you have teeth rattling shivers normally reserved for a cartoon character in spite of the fact you’re wrapped up tighter than Han Solo during the Hoth sequence of Empire Strikes Back.  This non-stop fever dream leaves a person so devoid of strength and viewing the world through blurred vision they end up doing things like watching 3 Men And A Baby twice in the same day because their dog never ceases to react to the baby, thus providing the only respite from the mind numbing mix lethargic boredom.

How did I get here?  This sorry sequence of sucky sicktitude began the first day back to work after my holiday break. As silly as it sounds, I always get a bit of a kick out of getting ready for the first day of work.  It represents a fresh start, a chance to rectify past mistakes, to change people’s misconceptions about me.  Of course this heartfelt optimism goes out the door when I enter my workplace (Known hereafter as The Incubator) and within a few hours begins to feel a shiver that for once is not brought about by the overload of work or certain people I work with.  When I mention this in passing to a co-worker who I respect, she proceeds to give me the lowdown on people who are recovering from or in the midst of battling a multitude of illnesses.  Some of these people join in the conversation to provide an unnecessary overview of their ailments.  I can feel the white blood cells decreasing in me by the moment.

The next day I return to The Incubator for further frying of my immunity system but can only make it through 2/3 of the way through before throwing in the towel and heading home.  Now I start to do whatever I can to joust with the aches within.  I sit for an extended period in the confines of the steam room at my gym in the hope of sweating out the toxins, but just end up annoyed from listening to two teenagers debate who could stay in the room longer without a drink of water. (Obvious Jersey Shore fans are they.)  I come home and take a bath in water as hot as possible while listening to Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue, but that only throws into my head a yearning to have a voice that sounds like it has partaken in 762,265 cigarettes.   I imbibe enough Vitamin C to ensure scurvy will never be an issue in my life, but that just leaves me with the complexion of an Ooompa-Loompa.  This is not going well.

So I gut through The Incubator on Friday and settle in for a weekend of becoming a living breathing Pig In A Blanket.  This is where having a dog is a beautiful thing as my beloved lab B Is Love alternates between laying on my knee and looking up at me with eyes that radiate “Anything I can do daddy?”  I spend 2 days sucking this in and begin to feel better…then I woke up this morning and feel as I did in the opening paragraph.   So I’ll head to bed early tonight and head back to The Incubator in the dim hope that I will finally shake this monstrosity of an ailment and get 2011 going proper.

But first, I’ll have to make room in the Pig In A Blanket – my wife Charger Gal just texted that she’s feeling achy and icky.

Like what you read?  Sign up to follow the blog.

Hit me up on Twitter: @mrc_truedat