Thanks for nothing, Fred

It's that time of year.  You know the time of year when we all are sharing our germy-germs with our family members, our teachers, our neighbors, our line-mates at Hell-mart.  It's really not the most wonderful time of year, and I have the trashcan full of used, wadded up, snotty tissues to prove it!


This week has been a really germy week for me.  It started right after Thanksgiving; I felt the snot accumulating in my sinus cavities, gearing up for battle against me and, eventually, my family, my students and anyone else who was in the pathway of one of my sneezes.

In addition to the sneezes and coughs and a head full of snot, I developed a headache.  And a shoulder ache.  And a hip ache.  And a neck ache.  And a knee ache.  What I'm trying to say here is that I was achy.  Really achy.

I went through the evening routine of making dinner (read:  heatin' up the danged quesidillas), cleaning the kitchen (not really, but I want to SOUND like Martha Stewart), making sure homework was done (it's never done), forcing The Daughters to brush their teeth (which they liken to torture of an oral kind), and finally getting them to bed.  When I finally collapsed on the couch and pulled my blanket up around my neck, I realized that I had not taken any kind of pain reliever for my achy, sneezy body.

Reluctantly, I tossed the blanket aside and dragged myself to the kitchen where I reached to the cabinet above the sink and pulled down the medicine tub.  In this tub I keep all of our medicines:  pain relievers, vitamins, ear drops, bactine, bandaids... anything we'd need to make us feel better is found in this tub.  I pulled out the bottle and poured two in my palm, filled a glass with water and tossed those two bad boys back.

I shuffled back to the couch then turned around to go get the glass of water - the pills hurt my throat.  Oddly enough, they felt "stuck" in my throat.  I don't remember ever having an ibuprofin get stuck in my throat.  I took a couple more sips of water.  The tablets didn't seem to budge.  I gulped some water.  Now they seemed to be budging ... or maybe they were fizzling???

I made the hacking noise thinking that'd make the pills move on down.  Instead, it only brought up a weird taste.  I tapped my tongue against the roof of my mouth trying to figure out where the taste was coming from.  It was kind of -- fruity.  Yes, definately fruity... in a (smack, smack) grassy kind of way.  Grassy?  (smack, smack), yes - grassy.  And fizzy.  And still stuck in my throat!

Take two a day and gag.

I gulped more water and made a few more hacking sounds and then I saw the bottle.  And then I recognized the taste.

In my sad, little wimpy, achy, germy-germ-infested state, I had not taken my beloved motrin.  Instead, I'd gulped two Flinstone chewables.  You know them:  The kind with the sorta jagged edges that taste like fruity horse food.

It was at this point that I began gulping sangria instead.  I'm not sure it helped with my aches, but after a glass or two, I really didn't care!