"Life used to be so hard"

"Life used to be so hard" ... Crosby et Freres when they were in their twenties, I suppose. Maybe, it's more like "Life used to be so easy." I dunno. When I have a cold, I become even more of a skeptic than I typically am.

I have a head cold.  My body above the neck has become a little mucous generator and pump .... and my head feels like a watermelon about to be smashed by that guy who smashes watermelons. I have no idea what his name is and am close to offering up a blessing for the capacity to recall my own. I got a couple of hours of sleep but it was too uncomfortable to be lying down.

I'm much like the image portrayed on the cold remedy TV commercials. Indeed, can there be anyone who is so righteous as to have been granted immunity to these viruses? Maybe house-dogs who don't have playdates or business meetings with others in the world of doggery don't pass their viruses about to each other. There is something, isn't there, called Kennel Cough ... No wonder GuntherDog shivers and shakes when he goes on rare occasions to be boarded. He knows the truth -- distance thineself from others and sit alone in the back pew in church!

I took a shower ... supposed to help. A colleague suggested that I stick tissues up my nose and walk in circles in the living-room. It reminded me of a comment made when I called a colleague with a problem about 2AM sometime around Summer 1969. He and some others (Bill, Milton and Jean-Claude) came over and brought a friend, an Indian Chemist, Arvin, then living in South America. Arvin proceeded to get drunk and his friends decided for undisclosed reasons that Arvin should be left with M, I and our two older kids. It may be that they divined that he was about to get violently ill from the ingested poisons. M & I had little experience with vomiting Chemists and called Bill.

H: What do we do ... Arvin's sick? ...
B: Why you calling me? He's your houseguest.
H: I didn't know we were playing tag and I was elected "IT" ...
B: Hey. Phyllis is feeding Max. Whaddya want?
H: Some advice wouldn't hurt.
B: Fair enough. Take a navel orange. It's gotta be a navel orange.
H: OK
B: Inject it with 10,000 mg of Vitamin C.
H: OK ... OK ... But how do I get him to eat it?
B: Eat it? You take that fortified navel and cram it up his ass!
    Click.

But back to the shower ...

Thought: Colds never really feel bad until you have one. In the shower, I thought of all the people I've heard talking about how "I hate this and I hate that" and the others that give it a 50-Cent name ... Upper Respiratory Infection ... URI, for those in the know ... or "I know it's the Swine Flu cause I feel like I got hit by a &^%$%^# truck" which is supposed to be diagnostic. I typically respond with (knowing that my little joke is getting old) ... "Hate? I only hate death and nuclear holocaust and I'm not absolutely certain about either of those."

Then, I remembered Jim Henson, the Muppet/Puppet Guy ... He thought it was ONLY a cold and dropped dead. Yesterday was M's Birthday and she got to eat dinner with Typhoid Howard from the Last Quarter Howards. Good thing she lives in the same Quarter, aye?