12/26/03: Merry (cough) Christmas (gack)

Well, if anyone ever thought I was vain, they can all kiss my hiney. No vain person posts this picture of themselves. :-)  

I have no idea how this happened... and maybe God was smiling down on me by letting me stay healthy just long enough so I could sing Midnight Mass, but I'll tell you what: I haven't been slugged with a cold like this in a long time.

I drove up to my folks' house right after midnight mass. While I was driving up I started to feel worse and worse, but I chalked it off to being tired and kind of raw emotionally... but after a while I realized that the symptoms weren't that of tiredness or grumpiness, they were that of (dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn!) the creeping crud! I felt so lousy that I couldn't focus on the road at all, so I pulled over under a light and slept for about 45 minutes and then started driving again around 3am. I needed it. I eventually got home around 4:15, and when I crawled into bed I knew I was hosed.

I figure with all the flying I've been doing lately and sitting next to people with colds for hours on end, plus running around, my resistance was a little low. So when I went to see the Music Man at WDL the other day where EVERY cast member was sick (one guy even was hospitalized with pneumonia), me getting sick was inevitable.

So, I spent Christmas Day 2003 with 38 layers of clothing on curled up in a ball shivering my head off, with a portable space heater on full-blast in my bedroom. When I did get up to attempt festivity, my head pounded, my ears ached and I coughed the black death, and my folks shoved a theromometer in my mouth which read 100-101. My fever broke overnight, and I do feel much better than I did, though I still feel like major dookie. My mom keeps reiterating that for the past 32 Christmases, I've been sick for around 29 of them, so odds are in favor of the bug.

I was supposed to go to work today, but thank heavens for Keith. I called him yesterday and he didn't even recognize my voice. Good thing he's a germ freak, because even if I wanted to go to work he wouldn't have let me. Keith is the best, and he held down the Accenture fort all by himself today.

So, now I get to be a 5th grader and tell you the cool things I got for Christmas. :-) Santa must have hit the lottery this year, because I done gooooooooooooood! I'm not into nouns by any means, but ya know, every once in a while you get what you need plus a little indulgence or two, and it feels really dandy. My whole family chipped in and got me a color printer (I've never owned my own printer... I need to buy a printer stand now which is cool, since I've been needing an excuse to re-do my office area at home), I got a baffle-box featherbed and new super-high thread count sheets (drool, drool, drool), a Trader Joe's gift certificate, Shopgirl by Steve Martin, an awesome silver ring from Danielle (how does she consistently know my ring size, when I don't even know it?), a really cool and unique silver necklace from my cousin, some cash, and some home-made-totally-from-scratch manicotti from my mom. Christurner got me these totally kick-ass thermometer earrings that actually work-- they completely rock. From a distance they look like really elegant garnet drop earrings, but once you get up close, you see what they are. I can't stop playing with them. :-)   My other cousins got me a fun nightlight and some yummy smelling candles... I got some other stuff, too, but I'm having a brain fart.

Christmas at my folks' place is always great. My mom is the best cook ever. Many years ago when my grandparents and other elder Italian relatives were still alive, we'd do Italian Christmas. Everyone would go to my cousin's house for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner of the Seven Fishes (well, not us, since we don't eat fish), and then everyone would come to our place the next day for the traditional Italian Christmas fare... a nice antipasto (I'd usually make that), homemade manicotti, spaghetti, meatballs, brasciole, pasta e fagioli, grandma's sweet ricotta pie, Sorrento's bread by the metric ton, the whole schmegege. But in recent years we've been doing more traditional stuff and mixing in a few Jewish touches as well, like turkey and stuffing, but also serving latkes (mmrllllmmmmmmm!) and lighting the menorah. It's very cool.

Anyhoo, for some reason I was really rooting for Italian food this Christmas, so Mom made me my own batch of hand-made manicotti and froze it so I could take it home, and she also made strufolo which came out AMAZING this year. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

So I'm looking forward to lunches and dinners for the next few weeks!

Come to think of it, I'm hungry. It's 6:30. I wonder what foodstuffs I can rustle up? I did see some Breyers Cherry Vanilla ice cream upstairs, and my mom got tons of candy and goodies from her students (reason enough to be a public school teacher!), plus we have leftovers aplenty, so maybe I'll go scavenge.

Or better yet, maybe I'll just yell "Parental Units! Feed your sick child!" a few hundred times until my folks make some dinner, or (more probably) smother me with a pillow. :-D

[5 hours elapse.]

Ah, the joys of being sick. Swindled my dad into making me a cheeseburger, and bilked (cheated, choused, tricked, cozened, defrauded, flimflammed, swindled) my mom into bringing me a cup of coffee while I curled my sick arse on the couch and watched A Christmas Story. I keep forgetting how funny that movie is, and I watch it almost every darn year.

Now we're watching tons of James Bond on Spike TV, you know, holding onto that Christmas magic as long as we can.

This weekend is closing weekend of The Music Man. I'm hoping I can muster the lungs to go see the show this weekend; I still haven't bought my awesome quartet anything, and I really want to give them a little something for all their hard work (that sounds dirty for some reason... zoinks!).   Blatt's got his cast party tomorrow night, but I don't think I'm gonna get to go. Bummer, dude. I'd rather miss that so I can be super-healthy for New Year's Eve.

On that note, I'm gonna hit the hay as it's coming up on midnight. Hope you all had a great Christmas and have enjoyed your Hanukkah. Despite the icky cold, I feel very loved and blessed. Thanks, folks. You're golden.