I can’t take the drinkable version. Can’t do it. Ask any of my kids, they’ll verify this. I used to pour the little cup, hold it, and start the drama:  “OK, I’m going to do it now. OK, here goes. I’m just going to drink this now. 1, 2, 3, ok, here goes. One minute. Ok, now I’ll do it. I’ll drink it now. OK, here I go, I’m going to do it this time.” AND ON AND ON. Such a baby. I could keep that up, without one bit of shame, for half an hour. And each time I said OK, I really meant it, OK, this time I really am going to drink it.

The thing that made it so good and so awful was the high alcohol content. I do not drink hard liquor, can’t bear to be in the presence of it, that smell, ugh. NyQuil tastes chemical green, and the alcohol forces a shudder. But of course that high alcohol content is what knocks you on your butt, what makes you sleep so hard despite being sick. They changed the formula quite a while ago and reduced the alcohol content, so while it still tastes awful, it doesn’t knock you out to the same degree.

Now, thankfully, it’s available in capsule form and I took two last night and slept like a log, didn’t cough all night, didn’t wake up due to my nose doing whatever it wanted to do (run? clog up? all at once!). So thank you, Dr. Hainer, for inventing such a wonder drug.

I made tremendous headway on one of my cardigan sleeves; just another inch or so and I’m ready to do the little ribbing. I’ll take a photo when that sleeve is done. SO CUTE.

1982: I’m TOUGH. My first child, Katie, was born at midnight (and I had several hours of pitocin and not one bit of painkiller, no demerol, no Tylenol, nothing). I went home 8 hours later, vacuumed the living room, made a pan of lasagna, and made a birth day cake for Katie. Sure, I kind of felt like all my insides might fall out on the floor while I was vacuuming, but I’m tough. I can do that.

1985: My 2nd child Marnie was born at 12:30, just after lunch, and I went home at 6pm that day — too much to do, needed to get home to Katie and throw a birth day party for Marnie after all. I made her a birth day cake, made dinner, and got busy. I’m made of hearty pioneer stock, remember.

my great-grandmother (2nd from the right), Lottie Ribble Askew

2004: I didn’t see that patch of black ice at the end of my friend’s driveway in Boston. I was there to give the keynote speech at her university’s Darwin Festival (why??) and I hadn’t written it yet, bad, bad form. So I hit the ice,

yikes. that hurt.

and fell and broke both bones in my right wrist so severely that my hand was hanging like a limp bag of bones off the end of my arm. We went to the ER, I got a cast, went back to her house and typed a speech, made my PowerPoints. The next morning I gave the speech and drove myself back to Rochester NY — a 7-hour drive in snowy icy conditions in a stick-shift car, no less, how did I do that? (The better question is why did I do that…) The breaks were so severe that I ended up needing surgery to have an external fixator screwed into the bones.

There’s obviously a very thin line between being tough and being a moron, and I don’t seem to know which side of the line to stand on.

But boy, give me a paper cut or a cold and wah, wah, wah! I’m the most pathetic miserable person, and you will know about it. Yesterday morning I got an email from a friend, a social psychologist who became one of my authors at OUP, and we just clicked so well we developed a wonderful friendship (we call each other bro and sis). In my response to his email, of course I mentioned just how very very sick I am, and how much a baby whiner I am despite being so tough otherwise. He got it, and wrote me this hilarious response:

So I feel sorry for you and wish I could return you to your normal wonderful self. I agree that this cold shouldn’t have happened to you and it should go away immediately. You’re too good a person to have to suffer this way. Plus, there are so many things you want to do and now you can’t do them. And, you have to stay inside, perhaps even in bed, when you want to be out in the world. Pobrecita.

Isn’t that hilarious and wonderful?! I think my favorite crazy line is “you’re too good a person to have to suffer this way.” That makes me laugh every time I read it or think about it.

I think there’s something about the very mundane pedestrian unimportant aspect of colds and paper cuts that gives me the freedom to wallow. With bigger concerns, I have to armor up, woman up, DO IT. But a cold? wah, wah, wah. Poor poor pitiful me. Bring me some tea. And Kleenex. And feel very sorry for me.

sock #1

The second sock is nearly at the heel part, so I will finish it when I’m in Honduras next week. I’ll mail them to you when I get home!  It has made me so happy to make them for you, and I look forward to making the next pair, too. I’ll use a different pattern, of course.

As immune systems will do, mine crashes after a prolonged period of stress. It’s been working and working, carrying me through the stress, and when the stress backs off just a little bit, crash. It’s kind of fascinating, if you ask me. My stress is still very intense; I woke up at 4:45am this morning so I could get to work early. But I guess the relief is coming, so crash. So just in time for my beach vacation: a cold, thankyouverymuch. Still, I’d rather be there with a cold than at my desk with a cold. If I have to have one.

Off to have a steaming bowl of tomato soup and an intense regimen of ColdCalm. And early to bed, so I can early to rise again tomorrow.