Soup

It is about four hours past the time my body said “Feed me!”. I have maniacally proofread and critiqued a novella until I thought I’d pull my own hair out of my head. I’m certain that high quality brain cells are now gone, never to be heard from again.

All day today I kept saying “I’ll be fine.”, but my head is telling me otherwise. Said head just forced me to take a Nyquil Liquid Gel. I will be drinking for the next 5 minutes to make sure it’s not sitting someplace odd, refusing to dissolve. I have no idea why pharmaceutical companies can make the tiniest birth control pills on the planet (Less than half the size of a Tic-Tac!), yet Nyquil has to be bigger than every vitamin I’ve ever taken. Explain that to me, please.

I am waiting for my infusion of soup. I ~~threatened someone’s life~~ kindly asked someone to pick some up for me, so I am hoping that it will arrive in a semi-hot state of being. All I want right now is soup…and my bed. God help me, this shit had better knock me out until tomorrow! Moreover, I do NOT want to be awake if and when the sun does rise (I didn’t check the weather forecast) because I am utterly sick of bright light. In fact, I might just have my soup in the dark.

I might even call in dead tomorrow. 😛

My fatal flaw of yesterday was falling asleep at some point during the later afternoon hours. Granted, it was a snowy/rainy day and seemed darker, and far later, than it actually was. I’d worked for 10 hours (I am halfway through the big manuscript and have already submitted part 1 of the second job back to the client.) and I was beat. To add insult to injury, I’m coming down with a cold and there’s only so much coughing and sneezing you can do before exhaustion sets in. By the time I woke up, I was completely shocked by the time. My first thought was “Great! Now I won’t sleep tonight!” I was right. I’ve tried going back to sleep a few times between 12:30 and sometime around 4:00 a.m. For some reason, I kept getting up and going back to proofing the big manuscript or reading. Neither of which is deeply fascinating, I am simply wired because a nap turned into what could have been a full night of sleep.

I cannot blame this on caffeine. I had exactly one cup of green tea yesterday and didn’t even finish it. I thought it would help with the cold symptoms because my throat felt like a desert had moved in. When I get the early stages of a cold there are very few things that work, but my ultimate dry throat remedy at this early stage is diet root beer. I have no idea why it works, but it does. Pennsylvania Dutch makes a diet Birch Beer that is also really great at moisturizing the throat and does a better job than Nyquil at calming the cough so I can sleep or function. Regular root beer doesn’t work, I’ve tried. I bought the diet one year by accident and have been hooked ever since. It not only helps with my throat, but if my stomach gets queasy for any reason, it often helps with that as well. If this gets worse, my other homemade remedies become more substantial in power. I don’t care what other people think: Chicken soup is a great healer. Unfortunately when I’m sick, there’s no way I’m going to make it myself from scratch. The few local places that make soup all know when I’m really sick because I’m way too weak to do anything, but call them to deliver it. It’s pathetic, but when you are sick, you do what makes you feel better and helps you recover as quickly as possible. Sometimes it also means Walmart and Walgreens are raided as well, but I do try to use natural courses before I grab the healer I hate the most: Zicam. Yes, it works. However, after a few doses it tastes like blood and there’s nothing that makes me feel worse than having that crap in my system.

During the start of writing this to now, I’ve actually gotten sicker. There’s a level of sick I hate reaching, but it’s happening for hours and I cannot deny now that this isn’t a 24 hour bug. I’m nursing a mug of mint tea and contemplating what will stay down for breakfast. If it’s not going to stay down, I’m not eating it. I’ll wait until later today when my stomach is less liable to reject food. I hate that I’m spending a Sunday morning like this when I could be productive in some way. Bleh! I worked, and that’s more than I probably should have done.

Here’s hoping your weekend has been filled with happier problems. Note to self: Buy stock in Kleenex, Ricola, Celestial Seasonings, Bigelow Tea, and any major producer of root beer.

If you don’t hear from me for a while, send soup. No, I’m not kidding.