Regularly scheduled programming will resume as soon the writer quits coughing, finds a new box of tissues, and recovers from taking a dizzy tumble in the kitchen.
photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net
I have a terrible cold. I’m all stuffed up and blowing my nose. A lot. If I forget to blow my nose, I start talking like dis. Bery hard to uderstad. So I am very thankful for an advance of modern science often taken for granted.
The humble facial tissue.
If it weren’t for tissues, I’d be laundering handkerchiefs laden with nasal excretions, too gross to describe on this blog, while simultaneously trying to blow my nose. See, I have to constantly blow my nose, or it gets so stuffed up I can’t breath when my mouth is closed. Which happens all to often when I’m concentrating hard on writing.
Which got me to thinking about babies.
Babies are on my mind these days because I’m going to be a grandma any day now. If you weren’t aware of that development, you must be new to this blog since I mention it almost every day. So let me extend a hey-howdy, hearty welcome to you, first time visitor! Thinking about babies made me think about another advance of modern medicine every young mother needs.
The snot sucker.
Also known as a baby nasal syringe. Or nasal aspirator. Whatever moniker you give it, the snot suckers is an invaluable tool for: removing disgusting boogers from noses so stuffed up they can’t breathe when their mouths are closed, babies too young to hold a tissue and blow their own noses, babies too young to obey the command to blow when a tissue is placed over the nose, and babies so young their default mode is to gum tissues to death.
In other words, if you’ve got a baby with boogers, you need a snot sucker.
Be sure to follow the directions on how to use the syringe or you could have boogers and snot going every which way, a prospect almost as disgusting as laundering mucus-laden cloth handkerchiefs. And with that thought, the time has come to end today’s tribute to miracles of modern science. Because, for the most squeamish among us, any more details about nasal excretions may require the use of a third miracle of modern medicine.
Smelling salts.
I’ve been kicking myself all week, ever since my throat went scratchy on Tuesday evening and morphed into a full-blown cold. (The pun’s intended, by the way.) I’m kicking myself, not because I got sick, but because of my lack of foresight.
Every time I catch cold, I make a mental to invest in tissue stock – as soon as I feel better. But as soon as I’m on the mend, there’s a mountain of neglected life to catch up on: laundry, cleaning, bills, mail, emails, work. By the time those are taken care of, my bright investment idea has become a dim memory and never becomes reality.
During my teaching days, the profit mogul mindset hit often. At least twice a year, my students who loved to share everything with their teacher, lovingly passed along whatever virus was making its way through their ranks. Some years we blew through our stockpile of tissues (one box per child as requested on the back-to-school supply list) by February, and a note went home requesting more contributions. Multiply that cycle times every elementary classroom in the United States, and you know why dollar signs dance in my eyes when I blow my nose.
Once I left teaching, I slowly learned why people don’t take advantage of this gold mine. First, people outside of education don’t get colds often (this is my first since I left the classroom in 2003), and they certainly don’t frequent poorly ventilated, germ-filled classrooms full of sneezing, runny-nosed children and teachers. Second, the teachers are too busy doing their jobs (which has been made harder lately by No Child Left Behind and larger class sizes) to call a stock broker.
So consider this your stock tip of the day. Invest in a tissue company before cold and flu season hits. Do it while you’re healthy, the same day you get your flu shot maybe. And then, use some of your Wall Street profits to make another kind of investment. Drop off a couple boxes of tissues at a school. Create a care package for a teacher you know – a bottle of hand-sanitizer, some cough drops, a box of candy, a thank you note, a gift certificate for pizza.
The dividends for such actions are incalculable, life changing. Wouldn’t you like to be part of an investment like that?
Our little gravel road, especially the hill beyond the bridge, has grown treacherous in the dead of winter. Passing cars packed down several December snowfalls before the plows came through and created the first layer of ice. For a couple weeks, I stretched my shoe studs over my tennies and braved the bumpy, lumpy, but not too slippery mess.
But last weekend’s freezing rain coated the rough layer with a thin sheen of glare ice. Since my first resolution for 2009 is no broken bones (Sally Fields and I have the Boniva thing going), the shoe studs went back in the closet. I went back to laps around the basement, then up and down the stairs. And since my second resolution is no broken cars, I’ve avoided driving on the hill whenever possible. But today curiosity got the best of me. After running errands in town, I returned via the hill and stopped to photograph our road glacier. Then I steered the car s-l-o-w-l-y over the slick stuff.
It’s eighteen degrees here, even with the sun shining. The bare limbs of the trees by the bridge and along the hill block out sun on the few days it shines. Even thought the sun’s shining today, the temperature is only eighteen degrees. It’s going to be a long, long time before the road is safe again.
So I’m glum today, discouraged by the prospect of weeks and weeks of laps in the basement. I’m a little stir crazy, anticipating the darkness that will close in before supper’s on the table. I’m overwhelmed by the writing and book marketing to-do lists in front of me. I’m stymied by the family situations that pop up and keep me from my work.
I check my calendar. Ten weeks until spring. Will I make it?
