Archive for the ‘illness’ Tag
It appears I may have contracted one of a number of viruses, cold, or a flu of some sort. Winter is tough enough when your confined to your home but being ill at the same time is murder. My energy level is such that I’m postponing all of my current projects for a while.
The bathroom remodel is on hold after making a surprisingly good start. All of the supplies have been delivered from Lowe’s and are piling up in my man-cave. That’ll start driving me crazy in short order. I’ve resigned myself to more sedentary tasks such as writing and sketching and a hour or so everyday of Halo where I can kill a few aliens without tiring myself out. There’s nothing so satisfying as ridding a planet of bad guys without getting out of your favorite chair.
I just finished having my breakfast which was an experiment in eating. One of our Christmas gifts this year was a NutriBullet used to make any number of smoothies to help us drink our way to good health. I always thought that was what bourbon was for but things change I guess. I eat more than my share of veggies and herbs and I really prefer eating them on a plate and not in a smoothie. For me smoothies sole purpose is to give me a proper substitute for creamy, sweet, and satisfying milkshakes. With that thought in mind I decided to try something different.
Normally I’m fairly regimented in my eating habits. I love cereal and try to have it three times a week. My other option is bacon and eggs and I’ve tried to cut back on that in recent years to just once every two weeks. This morning I filled the NutriBullet with two cups of almond milk (which I’ve come to love), a cup and a half of cereal containing freeze dried strawberries, oat chunks, and bran. I dropped in a half cup of blueberries and gave it two minutes in the NutriBullet. I was as shocked as anyone when I tasted it. It was fantastic and I’ll be having it again real soon. It may not be the oft praised health food that the fanatics require but it works for me.
The cat and I are spending some quality time together this morning after a couple of weeks of disputes. He’s been banned from our bedroom at night because of his insistence on waking us up at odd hours for no apparent reason. I locked him out of the bedroom a week ago and he been more than a little pissy ever since. He doesn’t like change in his life anymore than the rest of us but he has no choice but to adjust.
I plan on taking it easy for a few more days until after the Super Bowl and then try and get back to work. I’ve just downloaded four more novels for my Kindle and that should keep me occupied until then.
Life goes on whether we like it or not.
Why is it that we just love to entertain ourselves listening and watching young children. I suppose it’s their innocence and honesty so effortlessly projected. The recent rash of TV commercials containing one adult and four kids in a discussion group setting has captured everyone’s hearts. The honest answers coupled with their totally innocent facial expressions is priceless.
I understand the desire of businesses to use these kids for commercial purposes. If there were four or five adults sitting around talking most of us would click the remote and move on to things that were more interesting and believable. Adults are never perceived as being honest, especially those involved in the making of television commercials.
Over the years most commercials involving young kids and adults have not so subtly treated the adults like idiots. The kids are then shown as the smart and sensible members of the family. This kind of posturing plays right into the younger demographics but I always thought it was a little insulting to us adults. I readily admit that many adults are idiots but I always held out hope that it was just a small percentage.
This morning lying in bed in a semi-relaxed state I was quietly surfing the net when I came upon a number of sites listing actual letters from parents who were excusing their children from school. These samples reflect the actual wording and mis-spellings that those parents used. I’m sure the teachers who received these notes were as shocked as I was. It’s hard to understand how a reasonably intelligent parent would want their notes to the school to read this way. Enjoy them and then just slowly shake your head with your total lack of understanding as I did.
-
Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the shits. [words in ( )’S were crossed out.]
-
Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.
-
Please excuse little Jimmy for not being in school yesterday. His father is gone and I could not get him ready because I was in bed with the doctor.
-
My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.
-
Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever and sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
-
Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
-
Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
-
My child was absent from school yesterday because he had a sore trout.
-
Please excuse my son for being absent yesterday. “He has a cold and could not breed well”.
-
Excuse my son. He’s been under the doctor.
-
Please excuse my son from being absent yesterday. “He had diarrhea and his boots leak”.
-
Please excuse my daughter for being absent yesterday. “She was in bed with very bad gramps”.
-
Please excuse my child from school yesterday. “He had a bad stomach egg”.
-
Please excuse my child from missing school yesterday. “I thought we had a 3 day weekend”.
I certainly hope that the children of these parents are smarter than the parents seem to be. Bad grammar, misspellings, and a general lack of concern with making the notes read like they came from a thinking adult. There are times when talking with youngsters is the most refreshing part of the day. At least they’re honest and anything humorous they come up with is based on a lack of experience and not a lack of intelligence.
Maybe my lucks changing. After being flattened for almost a full week with some kind of flu I’m almost back to normal (whatever that is). Someone asked me if I was back to 100% yet and I could only smile. I stated the obvious that I hadn’t been a 100% since 1996. It was a vicious little virus that did a real job on everyone who was unlucky enough to catch it.
I started feeling much better and what did I hear next. Thunderstorm alerts and warnings for our immediate area. You might think that’s a bad thing but not for me. I freaking love thunderstorms. They started just as it was getting dark and they were beautiful. I wanted to sit out on the deck for a while but the rain was a little too intense for that. For almost three hours there was crackling lightning, heavy rains, and a howling wind. It was fantastic and I enjoyed every second of it. Unfortunately we get very few of these storms so I have to take the time to enjoy them when we do.
There wasn’t much else for the better-half and I to do but sit quietly, enjoy the storm, and talk about our day. I love our satellite TV system but even it can’t stand up to heavy rain like we were getting. It took hours for the signal to get through the heaviest of the downpours so we could be blessed with the standard list of reruns and crappy TV.
We’ve been buying more movies of late because of all the disappointing TV that just never seems to get any better. Recently during a weekend of free HBO and SHO I watched one of the recent ridiculous remakes of our beloved fairy tales, Snow White and the Huntsman. It wasn’t totally awful thanks to Charlize Theron but peppering our childhood tales with massive amounts of violence tends to make me uncomfortable and more than a little concerned for the young kids who are watching them.
As I was out shopping the next day I saw a sale for another insane remake of a fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. I took a chance and paid good money for it. What a mistake. The entire story was so badly rewritten that I walked away and refused to watch the last twenty minutes. Badly used profanity by the female lead was laughable. I understand using appropriately blunt profanity to make a movie feel more authentic but this was just really stupid. It did seem they were setting it up at the end for a possible sequel but I hope that doesn’t happen. Two wrongs have never made a right and these two would be no exception. If you haven’t seen it, don’t waste your time or your money.
I can tell I’m on the mend because the urge to criticize has been growing steadily for the last few hours. I should be back in fighting form soon with my keyboard in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Life will soon be good again.
I guess I need to apologize for the short and uninformative posting yesterday. My state of mind was kind of like a weather report on the evening news: Higher temperatures expected this evening with intermittent diarrhea and vomiting. Tomorrow’s forecast looks much better with lower temperatures and calm and clear conditions (I hope).
My better-half has accused me in the past of being a cynical SOB who is skeptical about everyone and everything. I have to agree with her to a point but I prefer the term pragmatic which sounds a little better. With that in mind I’m trying to look at this bout of flu or virus from a different perspective. I’ll pretend to be the optimistic and happy-go-lucky kind of guy my better-half wishes me to be.
Here goes. For most of the day I was in and out of sleep and running a fairly high temperature. I was dreaming and conscious most of the time but not really making much sense of things. As bad as I felt I found that special something that my better-half has been preaching to me about. I’m happy, proud, and honored to announce that I spent some quality time in a classroom with Sir Isaac Newton. His hair was a little strange looking but the conversation was educational and informative. I won’t go into specifics because they’re still a little fuzzy and hard to remember. Dreams are like like.
The second good thing about this illness was a little harder to discover but being the new and improved optimistic SOB I’ve become I finally figured it out. Weight loss. I’ve lost close to six pounds in less than three days and I didn’t have to hit the gym or participate in any physical activity. That’s a true statement if you don’t consider projectile vomiting a form of exercise. I know I sure don’t.
So, excellent and historically incorrect dreams along with a six pound weight loss. It really can’t get much better than that says my better-half. I hate to burst her rose-colored-glasses bubble but I have no choice. As much as I like meeting a long dead scientist and losing six pounds of ugly fat, it still wasn’t worth it. In my humble opinion being optimistic is highly overrated. I plan on staying just the way I am and the hell with Isaac Newton, a few pounds of weight loss, and my ever so optimistic better-half.
The morale of the story is simple: "Being sick sucks!"
This is going to be a very short posting due to this stomach virus I happened to catch from one of my ever loving family members. Between bouts of projectile vomiting I’m trying to write this so it makes some sense.
I wish I could pinpoint the person who infected me and you can be sure on one thing, revenge will be sweet, I promise.
everyuselessthing.com 