Got NyQuil?
I don’t. But I do have a cold.
Dammit.
My system’s all fucked up now. Tuesday, I never went to bed. I stayed up all night, watching bad TV and chatting with bwg. Early in the morning I realized that I was either having a pretty bad allergy attack, or a cold was emerging. Around 9 am, I showered and got ready for class. And I took some DayQuil. About an hour later, I had a minor case of the shakes and was typing like I was drunk.
At 12:15 I went to class. 2:45 I was home again. And I knew it was a cold and not just allergies. I contemplated going to bed, but I decided to stay up and try to go to bed at a more normal time.
Despite trying several types of cold/sinus/allergy medicines, I got no relief from my symptoms, which only grew worse as the day progressed. At one point, the sinus drainage was so bad, it was just thin liquid pouring out of my nose. I even thought I had a nosebleed.
Around 4, Kevin called and reminded me that I either needed to turn on the outside faucets to drip, or go to the store to buy some insulating covers to put over them. I’m glad he called, ’cause I never would have thought to take care of that. At 4:30 I dragged myself out to my car.
I also wanted to get some gloves, since I couldn’t find my own and it was COLD out, so I figured I’d try Wal-Mart first. (That morning, I found one bulky heavy glove and one mitten. I think they may even have been for the same hand. And I couldn’t find any of my light gloves.) Wal-Mart had a really crappy glove selection. And they didn’t carry faucet covers at all, so I tried Target.
Target has a shitload of gloves in the women’s section, but none were what I wanted. My old pair were cheap little knit things with little rubber bumps all over the palms and fingers. Those bumps enabled me to wear the gloves while driving, and the material of the gloves meant I could squish them into pockets easily. All the similar knit gloves at Target were bumpless. I could have stepped up to some nice leather gloves, but I didn’t feel like shelling out $30+ for a pair yet.
A couple of salespeople were chatting nearby. The girl commented about how most of the women’s gloves suck. They’re fancy and colorful, but not very practical overall. Then she said something about getting her gloves from the boy’s department. I decided to try that. Boy’s had an OK selection of gloves, but still not what I wanted. The only pair of gloves with nubbies were 100% wool, which I can’t wear. (Allergic.)
Target also didn’t carry the faucet covers. So I spent $2 and got a 2pack of the cheapie knit gloves from women’s. I figured I’d try them and see if I could drive.
Barely. They wanted to slip on the wheel unless I gripped it really tightly.
I decided it was time to head to Home Depot. I took the ‘back way’ and saw the new Kohl’s they just built. So I went in there to look for gloves. They had the best selection. And I even found knit gloves with nubbies! Unfortunately, the colors were pretty awful. Brown, funky red, funky green, and two funky shades of purple. I settled on the funky red. They had the same gloves without nubbies, and they had nice orange nubbie-less gloves. I was disappointed they didn’t have black or orange with nubbies.
I’d picked a bad time to go to Kohl’s. The place was packed, and it took much longer than it should have for me to pay for my gloves and leave. Almost every register was open, and there were only 2-3 people in line at each register, but all those people had full shopping carts. Some people even had two! One cashier suggested I go pay at the Customer Service desk. I walked all the way down there to discover it was as bad there as the other registers. So I walked back and tried to pick a line where the customers didn’t look like they were stocking up for half the city. It probably took me 30 minutes to pay $2.50 for my gloves.
After escaping from Kohl’s, I drove across the parking lot wearing my new funky red nubbied gloves to Home Depot. After only a little searching, I found the faucet covers and bought two. Then I drove back to Target to return the nubbie-less gloves.
It was nearly 7 by this time, so I went to Wendy’s to grab dinner/lunch/late breakfast. Mmmmmm, chicken bacon swiss.
I got home and tried to put one of the faucet covers on. And the damn thing didn’t fit. The faucet pointed outwards more than down, so the cover wasn’t deep enough. Frustrated, I went inside and ate my dinner while thinking of how to deal with the faucets.
I ended up taking a bunch of the plastic grocery bags we never seem to throw away and wadding up several inside a single bag which I then scrunched down into a cylindrical shape. I made two of these bundles. I took the second cover and went to the faucet on the back of the house. I held one bag bundle in a loose circle around the base of the faucet as I tightened down the cover. The bags seemed to work well to fill the gap and help seal the cover. The rear faucet also didn’t point out as much so the overall fit was better.
The side faucet gave me some difficulty, but I finally got the bags and cover in place there as well. I guess they worked, ’cause I’m not aware of any of the pipes bursting during the night.
Back inside, I thawed out a bit and did the usual tv/chat thing as I worked my way through a box of tissues. I noticed at one point that it was raining again. About that time Scott asked me if it was snowing yet. I knew it wasn’t, but I went down to poke my head out a door and see if it was freezing. I discovered that it was sleeting and freezing.
I’d gotten my ’second wind’ from being up so long, so I didn’t head down to bed until it was pretty late. I channel-flipped from bed and realized I find infomercials way too interesting. I don’t know why, and I’d never buy most of the products advertised, and Tony Little is just plain scary, but damn, the Ronco Food Dehydrator was looking cool.
It was definitely time to turn off the TV. I tried to read for a little while, but finally turned off the light around 4 am and had surprisingly no trouble falling asleep.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling any better by morning.This is a total head cold. The pressure in my head has just been miserable. Since no one else was here and I didn’t have anything pressing or urgent to do, I decided to sleep. I only got up a few times to feed the cats or kick them out of the room. The phone rang a couple of times in the afternoon, but I didn’t feel like getting up and going to the kitchen to answer it.
Just before 8 pm, I finally got up. My head still hurt really badly. It felt like people had been pushing cottonballs into my skull through my ears, and my head was full to bursting. My cheekbones have been aching all day. And my nose has alternated between running like a faucet or not at all, while being stuffed up the whole time.
I went upstairs to see if Dale had emailed me with his return flight itinerary. I ended up talking to some friends for a while, and Dale called on his way back to his hotel. I decided I was ok to eat, so I had some of the chicken I’d cooked last night. (I wasn’t hungry then, but it was cook it or throw it out.) It seemed pretty good to my diminished taste buds. Around 10, Dale’s brother ICQ’d me to say he’d be arriving around 4:30 tomorrow. That meant I needed to get the guest sheets and towels washed so I took care of that.
That seemed to be the spark I needed. As the laundry ran, I found myself cleaning the kitchen. Dale called around midnight and I took a break and talked to him for a while. He’d just had a long dinner with coworkers at a restaurant near his hotel. Someone had been buying a lot of drinks, and Dale was drunk. It was kind of funny. It made Dale hyper. We talked as he walked back to his hotel. In his room, he started up his laptop so he could tell me his arrival time. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Oh shit!” muttered something else, then burst out laughing.
I asked what was wrong.
“Well, I was emptying my pockets. Left pocket… pager. Right pocket… phone. Phone? Where’s my phone??!”
“Do you mean the phone you’re currently using to talk to me?”
<more hysterical laughter> “Yeah, that phone!”
After I got off the phone with Dale, I did two loads of dishes and finished cleaning the kitchen. I’m pretty impressed. The long counter/bar is so clean and empty, I feel like I should put stuff on it. Earlier, I was walking downstairs, looking at the counter and thinking that it looks so weird not covered in a ton of crap.
I took the clean guest linens upstairs and made up the guest bed. Then I cleaned the upstairs bath. Then I came out here to start cleaning the game room. I got Dale’s computer table cleared and wiped down. Then I decided to hop onto my computer for a minute.
Now it’s 6 am, and I’ve talked to bwg again, made some changes to Cocky Kitty, and written this entry. Which was only going to be a quick post. So, do I go ahead and keep cleaning, or should I go to bed now, probably awake around two, and clean for the few hours before I have to pick up Dale?
I think I should go to sleep.
