Head Cold

Last week I got nabbed by the mean, mean queen of all badass head/chest colds. It started with a cough. Luckily, I was quickly able to shift my initial diagnosis from lung cancer to common cold with the onset of copious sneezing and head congestion. I’m entering week two of abject misery and I’m pissed because this week is little boy’s 12th magnificent birthday and all he wants is to have a special day at home, just him and mom and brownies and ice cream {because he says we’re two peas in a pod} and the day afterwards is the year anniversary of my bilateral mastectomy. Has it been that long and has it only been that long at the very same time and does it really need to be commemorated by falling on Good Friday? An ordinary, day would be just fine for me, not that good friday has any meaning... I think it's not good because school's closed. I’m pissed because I need to be feeling good for both of these milestones. So instead of appreciating my larger health, or that I’ve not been sick all winter, I’m starting to wallow.

I’m coughing so badly, I expect to choke on my own lung and suffocate to death any time now. The other day I was walking to the car to pick up aforementioned almost 12-year-old when I started coughing so badly I threw up into the street... just a little. But then I had to stop twice on the driveway to puke and when I thought I was safely in my car I had to open the door to let loose the rest. At that moment, I realized, damn, I don’t chew enough, gotta work on that. Since then, I get to look out any of my living room, dining room or bedroom windows and see my own vomit splattered on my driveway, screaming at me to get out there with the hose, but that’s just not happening, I’m protesting. There is just no dignity in this situation, or the sounds I make coughing and blowing my nose all day, there just isn’t. I’ve coughed myself into vomiting several times since then and I really do think that whoever invented the garbage disposal should have a saint named after them. I vomit with ease, and efficiency, right into the disposal and vroom, it's gone. I’m an expert, seriously, it’s not a bit traumatic for me, it’s a skill like any other although I doubt it will help my resume any.

Meanwhile, I’ve been invited to be on local t.v. to promote my upcoming arts and crafts event. If there’s anything worse than vomiting on your own driveway, I think it would be being interviewed on t.v. Of course, maybe I could go there to throw up, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about being asked back. I haven’t responded yet, I’m a little too horrified, even though I dislike being a terrible coward. I'm awkward, un-photogenic and prone to babble on my best of days and these are not my best of days. I get very nervous when there are camera’s and/or microphones around. Recording a voicemail message, now that is traumatic.