An apple a day

This morning I woke up with Tickle Me Elmo having a go at my throat. Which would be all well and good if I were a masochistic puppet but last time I checked I wasn't made of velveteen remnants or polyester hair. And I certainly don't require someone's hand up my ass to simulate strange hinged-jaw movements that showcase my delightful gullet-less orifice.

Also, I somehow managed to restick my Breathe Right strip to my right forearm in the middle of the night. As breathing rarely has anything to do with right forearms, this did nothing to curb the steady drizzle of snot making it's way down into my stomach. Breakfast of champions, it is not. I tend to rub my face a lot when sickly, so sometime between midnight and feeling healthy and seven and feeling an unfortunate weather condition of mucus, I appear to have rolled myself in a field of Agent Orange. I knew all those years in 'Nam were going to bite me in the ass one day.

I pushed on through four hours of nursery duty because the money's good and what better way to spread Christmas cheer than by letting a five-month old gum your dioxin-infected fingers? Besides, Tickle Me Elmo had deserted his voracious tickling of my throat, probably in lieu of the veritable gold mine that is a room full of two-year-olds.

After lunch I made my way home and climbed three flights of stairs that felt distinctly like eighty. All the way I cursed the Third Floor Walk-Up, damning contractors the world over for failing to install one measly elevator. Once inside I went immediately to the thermostat and moved it up to seventy five because my fingers had suddenly lost all blood flow and if I wasn't careful, I'd be dropping frozen appendages like Elizabeth Taylor drops husbands.

Two hours later I woke up from my fitful and drug-induced nap in a fit of shivers and in distinct need of some pliers to remove the glass spikes from my throat. These moments always make me want my mama, not only because I know she'll bring me hot tea but because I have some morbid need for someone to see me when I'm deathly ill. I need someone, somewhere, to fully comprehend just exactly how miserable I am in that current moment. I need them to reassure me that I really am sick and I have every right to moan half-heartedly under the covers. And they're really handy when it dawns on you that the bottle of hydrocodone that Doogie Howser gave you after your stomach tried to birth an alien baby is sitting in the depths of your purse. Which is sitting in the middle of the entryway, right where you dropped it on the way to your bed mere hours before.

The only problem with hydrocodone is that a whole pill puts me in a very vomitous frame of mind-- and while eating wasn't high up on Things To Do list, forcing acid coated vomit up through the bloody remains of my throat was even lower. So I forced The Demonspawn from their very appreciated spots on my feet and pulled all the covers from my bed, grabbing my scarf from the closet because I quite like my nose and what if it should get frostbitten? It'd be all black and crusty and nobody likes a girl with an icky, half-gnawed off nose.

I stood in my kitchen wrapped in four layers of down comforter and polar fleece and watched the microwave while it heated up my pasta, knowing if I went back to my bed to wait out the cooking time, I'd never get back up. And then I'd never take the happy pill. And then I'd never make it to the Pier One sale because I'd have up and died alone with my cats in my third floor walk-up. And that's just too sad for words.

Which brings us to now: HIGH AS A FUCKING 747 FLYING OVER THE ATLANTIC. Still cold, but in a very dreamy sort of way. I have a very squishy mouth. Specifically, my lips feel all poofy and soft and when I bite them they seem to just kind of spill over my tongue. At least the glass spikes have subsided to a sort of swollen spikey marble feeling. I will take a throat full of swollen spikey marbles over the rotating slice-n-dice of the glass spikes any day. And if you're the one who has been sending me the glass spikes, have no doubt that I will find you and I will cut you.