The Joys of the Late Fall Season

Yes, as I embarked on all sorts of pre-holiday household projects like picking up ice cream wrappers in my front yard and dog crap in the back yard, inspecting the large balls of dust accumulating on my coffee tables and ignoring the laundry piling up, I began to realize that all of this work was beginning to drag me down. I was just tired, that's all. Was I working too hard? Yeah, but what else is new. Was it the stress of making my newly-modified mortgage payment that happened to be TEN WHOLE DOLLARS less except oh yeah my taxes went up so ten dollars MORE every month? Could it be the worry I felt when I envisioned what Thanksgiving is going to look like, seeing as how my mother is in the throes of some sort of new phase of her prescription drug addiction and she is now imaging that there is a feral cat under her bed half the day?

Frankly it was probably all of those things but also so much more. You see, I had the FLU. I would venture to guess that the last time I was this sick, it was Halloween of 1992. I was dressed as a bobby soxer and, being the HUGE rebel that I was, I accidentally drank what I later found out were called screwdrivers. Suffice it to say that I promised Sweet Baby Jesus that I would never, ever, EVER drink a vodka-orange-juice again if He would just please get me out of this just this one time! I have never had another screwdriver. Yeah, I've had the odd Long Island Iced Tea, Long Beach, Sex on the Beach, whatev. But never have I drank those dangerous concoctions with such naive abandon again. Because I don't like to be sick goddamnit.

And now I do everything right. I drink wine and when I have to drink it in excess I make sure it's over several hours and of course I have my aspirin and econo-sized glass of water before hitting the sack. I am a vegetarian, and if it were not for my butter cravings I'd just go ahead and call myself vegan. That's a fairly healthy diet. I do get some exercise because I have a strenuous job, not because I LIKE exercising. So I shouldn't get sick! It doesn't make any sense.

But last week, as I said, I was tired. I was cranky. I told Heracles that my ears were popping and I wanted to go to sleep. "Well, go to sleep then," was his brilliant reply. I slept. I didn't wake up until 10 minutes before I was supposed to email my micromanaging supervisor that I had made it to my desk. The next few days I slept more and more and felt guilty on the same scale. Minchie was crying out for attention like a child from a broken home. Kitty didn't give a fuck which is one of the reasons I love Kitty so much. Ah, finally the weekend! I could catch up at last! I had a brief half day of fun, shopping with a friend for baby shower gifts for another friend. Then home to wrap my prizes in the most beautiful way possible. All of a sudden, I felt a bad attitude coming on. I wondered if it were some sort of subconscious jealousy? Why was I so pissed OFF that the RIBBON wouldn't CURL and it LOOKED like SHIT? Ok, I thought. Just put this stuff away and finish it in the morning before you leave, MH. Ok. Sleep again, beautiful sleep. It was 7pm.

12am. My eyes popped open with the realization which is years old, but one which I can never forget. I was going to throw up? I was! I ran to the toilet and let 'er go. No, I thought. This can't be! I didn't have anything at all to drink! wtf is going on here? I sat around for a few after that first heave-ho, wondering what had happened. I probably felt just like Minchie felt when she was yanked from her comfy little house/yard and plunked down on a stainless steel table, operated on and put in a little holding cage, aching and confused. She would have wondered what had just happened. Whatev, life is weird, I thought. Go back to bed!

12:30am. Oh no. Not afuckinggain. Ran to the toilet.

All night I cried. I begged SweetBabyJesus. I asked "Whyyyyy am I hungover? What did I doooo?" And the answer:

Nothing, bitch, you have the flu!

Every half hour I threw up. By 6am I was throwing up saliva pretty much every time I made the mistake of swallowing it. I was a pathetic sight. What's more, this misery continued unabated for two days! Yesterday I started getting congested, which seems like it was a good sign because now I know that it's OKAY to SPIT! I have my own spittoon now. I spit all the time.

I didn't get Tamiflu.
I didn't go to the doctor.
I went to work today even though I had a fever because of some bullshit policy that if we call in sick three days straight we need a "doctor's note." How fucking outdated is that shit? But no way was I going to sit around at some crappy urgent care place with a bunch of scared teenagers who "might" have staph or some weird STD and some dumbass tweens who stapled their little brother's finger to the microwave cart door. Or, what's worse screaming toddlers! No thanks. No way was I going to shell out $35 for that hell.

I went to work.

Yeah I sneezed all over my micromanaging boss, and guess what. Too bad.
I said, "Oops! Did that get all over you?
I have a fever and I have the flu!"