Sick Daze

Sick Daze

I finally went to the doctor today. Apparently 10 straight days of coughing up phlegm is my limit before seeking professional advice not found in chicken soup, orange juice or the four different over-the-counter drugs that have thus far only managed to cure my ability to sleep. And strangely, Nyquil was the worst culprit. It apparently has the complete opposite effect on some people, which is weird. I understand it not working, but actually having the adverse effect? Kinda like a food that makes you hungrier when you eat it. Or toilet paper that adds more crap to your ass. (Why would he go there?)

The doctor actually had a med school student with her. She was hot, but not very bright, much like a lamppost I know. Anyway, I got a prescription for cough suppressant and antibiotics and found out that I almost have bronchitis. Here’s some shit I didn’t know until today and I’m 35. Bronchitis is just a fancy way of saying “you’ve been coughing for 14 straight days.” That’s it. No viral or bacterial invasion necessary. Not even a tongue depressor is required to make the diagnosis. Just some idiot saying “Hey. Haven’t you been coughing for like, the last two weeks?” So I have 4 more days to make it official. I feel amazingly confident right now.

I took off work yesterday to try to figure this damn thing out. And I came to an amazing conclusion. It was a great idea. It’s been a heck of a long time since I actually had a sick day that didn’t involve an eerily-worsening sleeping pattern or golf clubs. In fact, I only took one sick day off my entire 7 years at UMBC. And it was two days after I ruptured my Achilles tendon. I even went to work the day after I ruptured it. I’ve since come to realize I’m not that important. Additionally, those sick hours will leave if unattended to, unlike parking tickets and student loans. Vacation hours will pay out at the end of a job, but the sick hours just disappear if I remember correctly. So why the hell save them? Especially when I can justify it with… drum roll… an illness. Gary had saved up enough sick days to give him a summer off for his heart surgery. That’s brilliant. And way too far into the future to plan for. Once again, I’m not that important. I have over 21 days of sick leave right now. Paper cuts may begin to qualify as a debilitating injury.

I spent most of the day not talking. That was my goal. And it was relatively easy to achieve, even though the cats seemed to especially crave the occasional witty banter. I can drink fluids and take medicine and even sometimes golf at work. But I can’t shut up. So I spent most of the day in a makeshift chem lab trying to figure out which combinations of medicine and food seemed to generate more or less phlegm than normal. Unfortunately, my findings have been thus far inconclusive. Hopefully the behind-the-counter meds will be worth the rare trip to the doctor that doesn’t involve a ligament or persistent rash.

Still Standing Right Here…

Tired and Sick

Tired and Sick

So I’m sick. Not really that sick, but enough to piss me off. And I’m so ridiculously inept at getting myself better, it’s ridiculous (I need a thesaurus). Like my throat has been scratchy for days and my solution was to eat more ice cream. I thought about gargling salt water for a sec, but there were ritz crackers by my bed which I figured would serve the same purpose. And when trying to figure out how I got sick, everybody asks if I have strange sleeping patterns. These people don’t know me. Or they do and are basically saying “duh.”

So I tracked it back to the night I drove to Cleveland and back and didn’t get to sleep until 8am and then had to get up the next… day(?) at 5am. Anyway, after waking up at about 4pm that day, I couldn’t fall back asleep until about 4:45am. I woke up 15 minutes later, confused as cranberries (that’s not a real saying – don’t use it and expect results) and unable to identify where that damn noise was coming from. Is it the alarm clock?... No, not the alarm clock… I glanced at my guitar... No, probably not the guitar… THE PHONE!!! Got it! It’s the phone… No, nope… it’s not the phone… Oh crap! It IS the alarm clock! Why the hell is it going off now? It’s still dark. I must have screwed something up somewhere. Oh no, wait a sec… No, I was right. Shit on a duck (also not a saying)…

So that is the origin of me being sick. It’s the residual effect of my favor. This favor is getting bigger with every day that passes by that I can’t choke down a yuengling.

So me and 43 kids went to the Beach Water Park a few Fridays ago. I know. It’s a rough job. I put in for overtime that day. So anyway, it’s our policy that all the kids have on suntan lotion when they are outside. My jeep actually has that same policy now. Anyway, most of the kids left theirs on the bus, I think mostly because I told them to (oops). So I let the kids in my group borrow mine (like they’re going to give it back). It’s 60 spf, which is apparently very high in the world of suntan lotion. I know it’s more effective than 4 spf. So Jaci was helping one of the girls put it on and she had never seen suntan lotion this thick…

Quote of the Day 7/11/06

“Is this glue?”

-Smart-alec Claire.


Hey you little runt! You try peeling off two layers of your own skin for two weeks straight and see how you feel about using glue to keep the sun from having a B-line to your bones! No wonder nobody likes you.

Sick as a dog (and that is a saying… but why?),

Big Fish.


Still Standing Right Here…

Whole People

Whole People

Remember that pesky bacterial strep I told you guys about before? Well, it's probably not strep, but it's definitely bacterial (refer again to my medical background to figure out whether you want to believe it or not). It's having more fun than strep throat. I thought I was over it before when I had a badly sore throat and then had way funky stomach problems for a day. But I wasn't. Actually, I went through the same exact cycle last week, after I thought I had shed it. It's currently on its third lap. I think I'm gonna need to break down and get some antibiotics. I've been drinking water like it's the medical equivalent of duct tape to an amateur maintenance assistant. "Oh, I'll be fine if I just drink enough water." I drank a pint of water every 10 minutes for 2 hours before I went to bed a few weeks ago. I had to get up twice during the night to piss, and I still wet my bed afterward.

But enough about my bowel movements, let's talk about economics. Tony, in case you didn't know yet, has the job of "bank examiner." This entails a lot of exciting stuff, like, well, I don't exactly understand what. "So, Tony, what did you do at work today?" "Uh, well... we... you wouldn't understand. Let's play worms." And that's fine. I think everybody knows how to play Octopus Tag, so I don't need to explain my typical day either. But he did share one thing with me because he had to share it with somebody, and at the risk of sounding egotistical, I think Tony would be hard pressed to find anybody else nearby who understood what he did on a daily basis. I was just in the car at the time. So anyway, he had a job in which he had to total up numbers for a certain bank in all these different categories, such as "# of local ATM machines," "# of loans over $5000," and boring bank type stuff like that. Well, he thought one of the categories was so funny (for an accountant thing), that he wrote it down word for word, and showed it to me...

Quote of the Day 8/9/99

"Number of full-time equivalent employees at end of current period (round to nearest whole number)"

-Some bank examining thing


So what constitutes a non-whole number employee? Severed limbs? Below average height? General incompetence?

Running around my gerbil wheel,

#4,362.836


Still Standing Right Here...

Sarcasm in Training

Sarcasm in Training

Sorry about that last absence, but the last week has just been one big blur of booze, drugs, and chicks. Actually, the chicks are only about 9-12 years old, the booze is pink lemonade, and the drugs were vitamin C pills. By the way, I was really sick last week. At first I thought it was just allergies, but it turns out I had strep throat. Apparently, I'm allergic to bacteria. I didn't see a doctor or get a throat culture or anything, but I just have a feeling. I also have a feeling that the earth is getting dangerously close to the sun and will cause our atmosphere to burn up almost completely within the next 7 years, so take that medical diagnosis however you want to. But I was sick. Of that much, I'm positive.

I've said it before, but I love seeing children outsmart these "adults" we have working for us. Especially when it shows signs of a budding sarcastic bitter hatred for the world's supposed "humanity." One of the 12-year-old girls in the older group is cheating on her "boyfriend" from school with a 13-year-old junior counselor at camp. And she shows no remorse for what she's doing. Apparently I've been giving women a bad rap. It's not a conscious choice they make to be evil. It's inherent in their DNA. Genetics is to blame and that's a losing battle, despite what those Austin Powers penis pumps say on the label. If it wasn't for the fact that men's DNA make them inherently blind to it, procreation of the human race could be in serious jeopardy. I think I got a little off the topic for a second or two.

Anyway, I have a pet peeve which is admittedly sort of anal, but a pet peeve nonetheless. I get so annoyed when people leave dangling prepositions on the end of their sentences. "Where's Darryl at?" Crap like that. There's absolutely no reason for the "at." It's an extra syllable you could save for later in life, it makes you sound less intelligent, it's not grammatically correct, and all the information you need is contained in "Where's Darryl?" That, and it annoys me and I'll tell you about it when you do it, which will annoy probably both of us. Anyway, I'm trying to stop this at an early age in day camp. A 15-year-old junior counselor named Erica was caught using the sentence "Where can I get the dodge balls from?" I then went off on my little anti-preposition dangling schpeal (sp?), to which she corrected herself...

Quote of the Day 7/20/99

"Sorry. From where can I get the dodge balls at?"

-Erica


Apparently, smart ass is in the DNA too.

Ridding the world of the grammatically incorrect youth,

Mr. Cantaloupe.


Still Standing Right Here...