I am on my first semi-healthy day after a week and a half of being incredibly sick. Hooray! If you are at all familiar with the maths of calendars, you will notice that means that I was sick on Thanksgiving. There's something poetic about Indians getting sick on Thanksgiving (warning signs, perhaps?), but I am still a little too drugged up to look for a strong connection.
Understanding how I was sick requires a little explanation. See, I have a group of nieces and nephews that I am convinced are actually Delorean-assisted transplants from 1845 because they get the absolute WEIRDEST diseases. A couple of years ago they had an outbreak of scarlett fever in their family. Who gets scarlett fever aside from characters in "The Crucible"? No one, that's who. This year, their glamorous disease of choice is whooping cough, which was pernicious enough to cycle its way through all of the kids in their family and then hop the rails to my father (who watches them after school). Side note: All of this seems to imply that their mother is some Jenny McCarthy freak who never let her kids see the business end of an innoculation, but this is simply not true. She is a mindful parent who immunizes her children and sticks to regimented booster schedules. And she doesn't even like "The View", so there you have it.
After my father being ill for the better part of the month (poor Dad), I finally picked up the disease and got really sick on Wednesday before Thanksgiving. As you can imagine, this did not bode well for calling in to my new job. I imagined how it would look to my employer: "Hi! I am so sick *fake cough, fake cough* and need an extra day off before Thanksgiving. BTW- I have allergies that are going to kick up on the Thursday and Friday after Christmas and will have cramps the whole week of New Year's." Still, every time that I coughed, I got dizzy and almost passed out, which I suspected may be an indication of my inability to perform my job to the best of my ability, so I knew I had to call in sick. This suspicion was confirmed when I nearly sent the following email to my boss:
Pete,
I am sorry, but I will not be able to come in today as the cough I have been struggling with all-week has developed into a really bad cold.
Thanks,
Pete
I will not lie that my finger was over the "Send" button and ready to click before it even registered that I might be in danger of sending poor Pete into an existential crisis if I did not fix the signature. The day just got worse from there.
There's really not a whole lot interesting about being sick, so I will not bore you with the snotty details, aside from to say that on Thanksgiving, I coughed so much and so hard that I threw out my back. Do you want to know how much you have to cough in order to throw out your back? A LOT is how much. Thanksgiving dinner for the whole family was Progresso chicken soup (of which I mostly ate just broth) and some pop-canister biscuits that were way more delicious than their $0.99 price tag implied. It was just a miserable day for everyone.
The next several days were spent primarily in bed with a few pop culture highlights:
1) I had saved some money so I could do some online shopping on Black Friday because I do not believe in bleeding for bargains. I got a lot of stuff that I wanted for about 1/4 of the price, so I was quite happy. One could posit that I probably should have spent some of that cheddar on gifts for friends and family for Christmas, but I plead that I was sick and not thinking properly and wanting all the things ala a frenetic Allie Brosch cartoon. What I am trying to say is that you are all getting dollar store candy canes with bows on them for X-mas.
2) I watched the mid-season finale of "The Walking Dead" and need THER-A-PY afterward. WHERE IS THE BABY, KIRKMAN? WHERE IS THE BABY???!!!!!
3) I started JK Rowling's clever little pseudonym book that I purchased last month when I was at Powells, in a hurry, and needing to spend money I got from selling other books. Side note: twenty minutes after I left the store, I remembered that I still did not own the Jim Henson biography that I was dying to read. ::facepalm:: It's pretty decent. I mean, it is not crazy good, but it is definitely entertaining and engaging. I imagine that this must be what she does to relax instead of playing Candy Crush. Damn, smart people.
4) The fulfillment room at Amazon must be INSANE in the hours following Black Friday because they both forgot that I was not a Prime customer and that I did not pay for a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack of "This is the End". The result was that I ended up getting my purchases after only a two day wait and with a lovely little cereal prize in the box.
Last night I watched Amazon's accidental recommendation and LUUUUVED it. I should say that I love Apatow movies like "This is the End" not for the big laughs but for the smaller moments that are just ridiculous. Seth Rogen smoking a Gandalf pipe- "Hello young hobbit! I am a well-known homosexual advocate." The fact that Michael Cera is a ridiculous and obnoxious coked-out party kid WEARING A WINDBREAKER. Jason Segel bemoaning his crap work on a wildly successful TV show. Paul Rudd running down the street losing his shit like a girl while carrying a comically oversized bottle of champagne. Also, one of the demons looked like one of the Beasts of Gozer from "Ghostbusters", so of course, I was all in. I could have done without pretty much any scene with Danny McBride (5 minutes fighting about jizz? Really?), but then there would be no amazing Channing Tatum cameo, so I guess you take the Magic Mike with the bad.
I don't really have a clever way to end this entry, so instead I will just encourage everyone to take their vitamins; drink lots of fluids; and if you have children in your life, please seal yourself up in a hyperbaric chamber unless you want to get consumption.
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