Sunday, January 01, 2006

Though not generally what one would call tradition-bound, I do find that I cling to some real doozies like the post Christmas respiratory infection. Some years, it's more annoying than others: have ended up in hospital emergency rooms on New Years Day with full-blown pneumonia. This year, not as bad as that, but draining just the same. It started last Monday with the aches and pains, the exhaustion and the burning throat. Half-heartedly fighting it (what's the use? That's why I slid back so this past year - old stuff coming up to play with me again and again and again. Got tired, stopped fighting back.) probably caused things to get worse rather than better, so I ended up without a voice and feeling like a wet rag by New Years Eve Day.

We kept the festivities very low key as a result: dinner with friends (a glazed ham, some scallopped potatoes, peas washed down with Joachim's gorgeous spiced wine), Pablo reading to us a bit from a book of Native American myths, Sleeper (how is it that this movie gets funnier and funnier each time we see it?). Flipped channels a bit to see New Year being celebrated in TV-land, was happy to see Dick Clark looking and sounding as well as he could. After the ball dropped, we decided to climb Winter Hill to see if we could catch some of the First Night fireworks: just missed them. Only slightly disappointed, we wandered back to the house, decorating cars by drawing cartoon figures, 2006s, "Happy New Year" in as many languages as we knew in the snow on windshields.

4 comments:

Yogo said...

some editing done here?

Be said...

Snort - can't get anything past you!

I wasn't sure that the first sentence I had before (following in the footsteps of...) was correct. It bothered me, so I tried to find a workaround.

Anonymous said...

Well, well, shock of recognition, small world, take that as read, eh? I too get the annual respiratory infection. This year I've been treating it with nasal lavage using an isotonic NaCl
/NaCO3 solution. Like all my favorite quack nostra - oil of oregano being the most favorite - this one really feels like it is accomplishing something. And so it has - I have so far not lost my sense of taste, it has so far not migrated down into the lungs, and it seems to be clearing up some weeks before it normally would have. Other than that, nothing happening. I did decide that of all the 150,000 - 200,000 adjectives in English, only two are required to describe a sick male: whiny and dramatic. I reported this to a married friend, who needed less than 2 seconds to run through her memories of her husband's illnesses, and concur.

Be said...

Poor dear! Well, I guess that the "whiny and dramatic's" got to be a symptom of feeling that awful combination of weak and needy. I'm a girl and, much as I'd love to be weak and needy (or whiny and dramatic), I just can't seem to find it in my heart to impose it on anyone. Maybe it's from being with my cats for so many years: am more likely to curl up in a corner to die in peace than to call someone up and say - "Hey, I'm sick! Take care of me!"

Oregano? Hmm. I usually take a bunch of thyme leaves and make tea out of them. That works pretty well. Didn't harvest any this year, otherwise I'd have done it now. I'm wondering if this is having some impact on the recovery. Have been inhaling tea tree, as it says that it's disinfectant like thyme. The first inhalation is *horrible* - burns the nose, the throat, the upper bronchial passages. Afterwards, though, it really soothes.

Yearly respiratory infections, eh? Same time of year? You aren't my little brother, are you? We both suffered through the same for years. This is the worst it's hit since I stopped going back to the family for Christmas-New Year (about 10 years ago).