Oy, How I Suffer

Nature's antibiotic

The cold that wouldn't end was pretty much gone last week, and I was looking forward to resuming a normal blogging life, sans complaints about aches and pains and all. But then Thursday it came roaring back to life as the most godawful sinus infection ever, all on one side of my face, making my teeth hurt and my eye hurt and forcing me back into the arms of sudafed and tylenol and aspirin, my BFFs, apparently.

I swear, it was like that scene in Fatal Attraction, where Glenn Close pops back out of the bathtub with that knife. I mean, WTH? I was feeling BETTER. I biked 20 miles last Monday. Sheesh.

As is my wont, I assumed that orange juice and OTC meds would cure all, and, honestly, I never took people who complained about sinus infections seriously anyway. Just a fancy name for a head cold, that's what I thought. So I soldiered on, through Thursday, when I acted like a person who isn't about to die from the worst sinus infection of all time and did a bunch of stuff I can't remember now, and through Friday, when I drove the girls an hour away to pick strawberries in an open field under hot sun, and did I mention that sinus infection?

There were MORE than this.

Of course, when we got home, I was able to relax. Ha, ha, ha, NO! Because we had $65 worth of strawberries sitting on the kitchen counter, all threatening to go bad at once if I didn't do anything with them. So I cooked and canned 2 batches of strawberry jam, which made barely a dent in our strawberry supply, and then I separated out some strawberries for dinner, and there were STILL 2 whole flats left, and then Larry came home and I started crying about the whole strawberry situation, so he made them disappear in the downstairs fridge for a bit.

I like that guy.

Saturday, still suffering, I worked at the yoga center, came home and hung out with neighbors at a grown-up birthday party, and then, FINALLY, lay down on the couch. At which point Brian said, "Best Buy wants me to start tomorrow and I need black pants and black sneakers and a white polo shirt." Larry, sensing that I was incapacitated (maybe it was my lying on the couch, moaning in pain, while dialing the Urgent Care hotline - he's very perceptive like that), volunteered to take Brian to Kohls, for which I am forever grateful.

Guys, sinus infections are REAL THINGS.

So I staggered into Urgent Care and waited over an hour, along with other people in similar states of distress. When I left, I was clutching my prescription of antibiotics and thanking God for people who actually want to do science-y things like cure diseases and make medicines.

I slept maybe 3 broken hours on Saturday night, because antibiotics don't cure things right away. (And why not, you science-y people out there? WHY NOT?) And here's the kicker: I was supposed to bike 56 miles on Sunday for the Tour de Cure.

Larry, saying HE would go to Kohls.

So, yeah, that didn't happen. What did happen is that, mid-morning, Rachel came up to me and said, "The local theater is showing Casablanca at 11:00." And can I mention right here how proud I am of raising a daughter who knows that that is an important thing? SO PROUD.

The girls and I went to see the movie, me clutching my tissues and Ricola cough drops, and it was as awesome as it always has been. Seriously, BEST MOVIE EVER. When I am dying (I mean, if that's not what is happening right now), I am going to make the hospice nurses show me that movie.

Do they show movies in hospice? Must check.

And when we came out of the theater, we saw all the Tour de Cure bicyclists milling around, just back from their rides, and I felt a teensy bit guilty I wasn't among them. Then I remembered that, if I had ridden, I still wouldn't have been among the finishers; no, I would have been lying dead somewhere along the route and causing the race organizers no end of headaches, what with the extra paperwork and dead body removal and all. And who needs that?