fighting the wee beasties

I feared that I was for sure getting sick yesterday, and I don't think it was just an allergic reaction to going back to work after a 5-day weekend. Aching all over, upset tummy, scratchy throat, chills.... Celia has been taking "Airborne" for the past week feeling like she was coming down with something, and my littlest nephew up at the Westport house for the family Christmas rendezvous pretty much barfed his way through the holidays. (Actually the story is more rich and complex than that but I'll gloss over it on the side of protecting his dignity). I do not hold him nor his parents, nor Celia, responsible for anything that may now be trying to infect me; there have been plenty o' germs to go around and allegedly his G.I. complaints were a side effect of an ear infection and the candy-pink antibiotic liquid he had to take. I remember taking that stuff when I was little. Not too bad as far as medicine goes but it has that distinctive smell. Amoxycillin in pill form has the same smell.

So I started taking Airborne yesterday too, along with aspirin every 4 - 6 hours, and I'm hanging in there. Didn't feel great today but good enough to go to work again and keep forging ahead with the end of the year completion of forms and tying of loose ends. I was somewhat skeptical of Airborne, "DEVELOPED BY A SCHOOL TEACHER TIRED OF GETTING SICK IN THE CLASSROOM!" but watching / listening to the effervescent tablet dissolve is strangely soothing in itself. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to school teachers. We should never let ourselves be foolishly limited by whatever training and professional credentials we actually have. For all I know, that school teacher could have studied Chinese herbal medicine in addition to obtaining the teaching credential. Mostly I hope that the school teacher has seen some of the profits on all those attractively packaged fizzy tablets over the past year. The RiteAid on the corner keeps selling out of them.

Meanwhile the creeks are rising. Celia said that Sycamore Pool was over its banks yesterday and some of the park benches in Annie's Glen are surrounded by water. Fortunately either nature or some surprisingly farsighted and intelligent human design set it up so that, barring inland hurricane or tsunami, the creek near us floods into the park, not into the nearby condos and houses. I love it when good planning actually happens.