Down Time

My self-medication/presents from the craft show -
Aziraphale & Crowley and Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Of the unintended variety.

I had a two-day craft show after Thanksgiving, and I woke up on the Friday with a sore throat. No problem - we'd done family dinner the day before and it was probably just scratchy from talking too much. I wasn't getting sick.

I don't get sick often. It's an odd point of pride. I'm not Holly Hygiene; I avoid antibacterial hand stuff like it spreads the plague, and generally I get through the winter with no issues. Not this time.

We loaded into the venue in the afternoon and Mario went off to do things while I set up and hung out with the other vendors. Somewhere around the 4:00 p.m. opening, I started to cough. Not. Getting. Sick. Dammit.

Saturday. Sick. Sore throat. Cough like a German shepherd. Headache. Eight hour craft show with no backup - Mario already had plans and there was nothing to be done about it. At least it was in our town so if I was at less than my best, my neighbors would forgive me.

It's been over two weeks. I've coughed and hacked and cursed and consumed several gallons of cough medicine and orange juice and it's finally - FINALLY - breaking. I didn't go to the doctor, because a) I don't like to go to the doctor, and b) this has been my life.

Growing up with two chain smokers, my childhood was yearly bouts of bronchitis. When I grew up and moved out, it changed to once-every-five-years. Now it's apparently longer than that, because Mario may have seen me get sick before, but he remembers nothing as alarming (and noisy) as this.

Better now. My head no longer feels like a bowling ball that's going to fall off and roll around the living room. It's been annoying, too, because it's hard to write when you can't think straight, and I've been on a nice roll with the new project. So instead I've been doing social media and marketing stuff, the only level my brain would work at. But now it's clearing, and there are no more craft shows, and I can roll into Christmas with something resembling a sense of normal.