Where Are These Terrorists When I Want to Kiss Them?

Seriously.

If I could just give all of them a nice big kiss, most of them would be dead within two weeks.

This damn virus has still got me housebound and feeling like shit, after ten days. I haven't slept for more than 20 minutes at a time for six days at least -- oh, now that's not true, either, because this morning I slept for nearly an hour this morning before the damn phone woke me up. (You had better believe that tiny machine will be turned off before I attempt to sleep again!) Plus, my throat is still sore from coughing for all those days (and especially nights).

Bernie and I were talking on his lunch break today, and decided that this one is in the Top Ten Worst Bugs we've ever encountered. The absolutely wracking cough, the inability to rest, the physical weakness that have accompanied it -- for so many days -- yup, it's a prime contender.

I can remember when I was a kid, and got the measles or some such, and spent two weeks on the couch in the living room because my parents were afraid to let me out of their sight. The room had all the windows covered, I remember that, but not much else of that time, so it must have been pretty bad. I also remember how happy my dad's face looked when he brought me a couple of tiny pieces of pork chop and I ate them, at the end of that illness. So that one probably takes the top of the Top Ten list.

About thirteen years ago, I caught the flu, and thought I would die from it, especially after the long, long night I spent in fever hallucinations, thinking that I was an overstuffed chair that had been mistakenly created with sentience. I really thought I was a chair, and I really was dispairing for the voiceless existence I'd been given. That bout is probably Numbah Two, and convinced me of the necessity of getting flu shots each year since.

I haven't felt in danger of dying from this one, so I can't say that it's "Number Three" -- but I honestly can't remember feeling this crappy from a plain old cold virus. The wrenched muscles from coughing were alleviated by taking a couple doses of valerian; the nausea and diarrhea were (blessedly) short-lived; the coughing is disgusting, of course, and makes my throat hurt; but I think the worst is the inability to sleep. (No, Nyquil doesn't even touch it.)

Yesterday was Sunday, with Alex and John and Bernie all off to San Francisco to accompany Alex to the airport for her trip to Chicago. Though I had coughed myself awake for most of the night, I did have a lovely half hour of sleep, in which I dreamed.

I dreamt that I had somehow gotten shit all over the legs of my pants. Not my own shit, this was like peanut butter-colored cow shit. I cleaned myself off with paper towels as best I could (I was at an informal gathering of some sort) and then looked down to find myself covered with shit again. For a moment, I was horrified, and then, in the dream, turned to Bernie and said, "Do you know what this means? It means this is a dream, and I'm ASLEEP!" And for the rest of the dream, which involved more piles of shit in doorways and stacks of forgotten papers I had to go through, I was in joyous spirits because I knew I was asleep.

When that's the high point of your week, you know next week has GOT to be better.