Tongue depressor

Having given myself over to the reality of this cold that has settled into my bones, I was tempted in a biblically huge way to just succumb to the creepy crawlies and call in sick this morning. But I grabbed myself by the collar and made me get up and dressed. When I finally made it out onto the porch and had locked the door, I realized that the whole porch was covered in a thin sheet of ice. Now, I have trouble with my balance on a good day with my health and a flat, dry surface; throw some ice down and it's a sure-fire way to get some spontaneous flailing that would put all the performance artists in the world to shame.

Having no faith in my ability to balance on the icy steps, in my cute but not iceworthy boots, I grabbed onto the post at the top of the steps and made my way down, one by one, heel hooked on the back of the step, until I couldn't go any farther without letting go of the post. It wasn't pretty, but I hopped over the side into the yard - one more step down would've been lovely, by the way - and was able to make it to the car without my ass meeting the ground in that sudden, impetuous way that it usually has. We'll call that a small miracle.

My forward progress was all predicated on the notion that once I got to the office, I could quiet the demons in my head, chest, and throat with some DayQuil. That is some nasty, nasty shit. I can't think of too many things that I think taste worse than DayQuil. So, why don't I just shut the fuck up and take the handy dandy taste-free DayQuil capsule form? Well, because..have you seen the size of those things? I can take small pills. Big pills have to be broken into smaller pieces for me. Yes, I am that big a pain in the ass. But you can't bust up a liqui-capsule. Why did they have to make the fuckers as big as my head? Why can't they make them half the size and say, "Take four"? Anyway, you see why I am a slave to liquid DayQuil and its nasty-ass tongue poison.

Once I'd settled in at work (and by that I mean I had a fresh can of Coke and was reading email), I had a breakfast bar so that my tastebuds might have a pleasant memory before I poured on the liqui-shit, and then I dug out my trusty office DayQuil. I went to pour some into a spoon, and it looked...wrong. It was, well, nigh unto lumpy. Grateful that I hadn't put this chunky abomination anywhere near my mouth, I looked at the expiration date on the bottle, and let me tell you - it doesn't take long for DayQuil to start growing legs. Looked like a trip to Walgreen's would be my fate.

I shuffled over to the cold and flu remedy aisle - you know I'm really sick when my first stop isn't the toy aisle to browse the plastic figurines and Play-Doh - and began what I thought would be a quick search and recover mission for the DayQuil. I saw rows and rows and rows of NyQuil blue, but nary an orange buoy bobbed alongside the blue. I searched across the aisle, I searched the endcap, I went back where I'd looked before because, let's face it, I'm old and sometimes I miss stuff. Nope. Just my luck, I thought, they're all sold out of DayQuil. NyQuil is bliss, and I don't even mind the flavor, but something tells me my sleeping at my desk during work hours would be frowned upon in the sternest possible way. I was just about to ask somebody why the hell they didn't have any DayQuil when they knew I could burst in at any moment, in dire need of clarity in the midst of my snot fog? I mean, really, people!

Then I saw the sign. Certain products were being kept behind the pharmacy counter because they contain pseudoephedrine, apparently a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamines (who knew? I've been makin' meth wrong all these years!). I had to take a little card with a picture of DayQuil on it, in all its orangeness, and have the pharmacist hand me a bottle. It's a good thing I didn't feel like gasoline-soaked dog shit after pharmacy hours. If I'd felt better, I'd have kept going back to the pharmacy with new tags, just to see how many they'd let me buy before the cops showed up. But I decided a wiser course was just to take the shit back to the office and try to dose myself into a state of pseudo lucidity.

I had to work hard for that DayQuil. I tore the protective plastic collar off the bottle and poured it into the dose cup - no lumps, just smooth orange elixir. 30 millilitres is a lot to drink when it tastes that much like electric dung. Sure, it helped and I was able to work all day, but at what cost to my poor tastebuds? Here is a sample of my DayQuil face:



I think the word I was searching for here was RETCH!

I may still be emotionally scarred from this. Let's hope I don't get sick again before the trauma wears off.