I Love Cold Medicine

I feel like a bucket o’ dung today. Or more accurately, a bucket of snot. For some reason, I find the latter image more reviling than the former. I’ll spare you an exposition on why this is so.  Anyhow, I’m tres congested and exceedingly whiny about it, but there is one aspect of having a cold that makes me happy: I have an excuse to take cold medicine.

I love cold medicine.

This morning I woke up and rifled through my medicine cabinet, carefully reading the labels on each of the panoply of over-the-counter cold medications stored therein. I opted to take the Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom Severe Daytime Non-Drowsy formula because it was the only medication whose packaging included the warning, “Stop use and ask a doctor if nervousness, dizziness or sleeplessness occur.” Because that’s the kind of high I want to be today.  I find nasal congestion far easier to bear when I can’t actually feel my face.

So right now, I can’t actually feel my face. Plus, I’m feeling SUPER MOTIVATED. Like at any moment, I might leap up off the couch and go clean behind the fridge or exterminate the dust bunnies lurking under just about every piece of furniture in my house. 

In all likelihood, though, I’ll continue to sit on the sofa doing nothing but feeling, thanks to the euphoric effects of the cold medication, that this nothing I’m doing is really quite spectacularly something. This is probably for the best. 

The last time I dosed myself on cold medicine was approximately six weeks ago. I have a one year old, so already I’ve been sick more times this year than in the past two years put together. Anyway, maybe because I’m super dedicated but more likely because I’d managed to fall a week behind schedule, I was determined to teach my classes at any cost. So I took a long swig directly from a bottle of cold medicine, tucked the bottle into my messenger bag, and headed off to school. About five minutes into my first class, the following exchange took place:

Me: “Sit down, please.”

[The students stare at me from their seats.  The seats in which they are already sitting.  I sit down.]

Student in the back row: “Did you just tell yourself to sit down?”

Me: “What?

Student: “You just said sit down, and then you sat down.”

Me: “Oh. Yeah. I told you I’m sick. I took cold medicine. Lay off.”

Student: “Can’t you, like, get in trouble for coming to class high?”

Me: “I’m not high. I’m high on cold medicine.”

Student: “You just said you’re not high, you’re high.”

Me: “Shut up.”

Student: “Did you just tell me to shut up?”

Me: “No. I thought it.”

Student: “No, you said it. I heard you.”

Me: “Shut up.”

Clearly, I am nothing if not a professional. At any rate, a pretty astounding lesson on the passive voice was taught that day, so credit should be given to me for great valor in the face of a head cold.

Today, though, I don’t have to leave my house for any reason and will therefore have significantly fewer opportunities to publicly humiliate myself. Unless, of course, I decide to write a blog post. Incidentally, that last sentence caused me considerable grammatical anguish. Does one write a blog post? Or post to one’s blog? Or is “blog” an accepted verb at this point? I could look it up, but meh. I’m enjoying the illusion of productivity and don’t want to shatter it with anything resembling actual productivity.

On that note, I think I’ll shut up now. Extra-medicated love to you all.