1-800-WE-KILL-U


Friday night, or the wee hours of Saturday morning, I was ready to call this number and arrange a house call by Dr. Kevorkian, or anyone else willing to put me out of my misery. It is amazing how just a few hours of puking, chills, and intestinal distress (Meeg calls it "peeing out your butt"; i call it no fun at all, especially when you're throwing up at the same time) can bring me to a place of no principles whatsoever, ready to endorse assisted suicide---as long as it's mine, that is.

I don't know how it started, but I do know when: around midnight Friday. I thought I was so tired I was getting naseous...nope, I was SO getting the flu, and preparing to puke and shiver and, well, you know. Between 5 and 6 a.m. my body decided it was sufficiently empty and could spend the next 16-ish hours with every bone, joint, and my head especially, aching. My room was far too bright for such an aching head (as was the computer screen and the TV). If there was a black hole nearby I would have dove into it. As it was I hibernated on the living room couch, drapes drawn, doors closed, doggies present, with an occasional shuffle out to the kitchen for a glass of Sprite.

Okay, what's really weird is that Craig was just as sick as me, at the exact same time, but not the same bug. His was respiratory rather than intestinal, but he was equally knocked out at the same time. We felt like we lost an entire 24 hours. Each of us was able to get a decent night's sleep on Saturday, and felt a lot better Sunday morning. For me, however, I didn't really feel back to normal until late this afternoon, and perhaps not entirely 100% as coffee after dinner was still unappealing...I opted for tea.

Tea is so loyal...I mostly ignore her, think of her as the slightly dim stepchild to my brilliant, high achieving first-born-son coffee(shall we call him "Peet"?), yet when I need her most, reach for her in my time of weakness and need, she never overpowers nor gloats...just shows up---hot, sweet, mild, comforting---my djarling.