On the mend

Snot does not make good brain matter.

No matter how hard you try to think, no matter how experienced your fingers are at finding the right keys on the keyboard, if snot has taken over your brain matter, you are intellectually doomed. At least until your brain reasserts itself.

It's times like this that I am almost willing to bow down and kiss the feet of the Micro Soft monolith for inventing spell check and a grammar checker, otherwise my snot-tainted mental efforts would be even more puerile than they are. I cannot even correct half of the typos, my befuddled brain guiding my fingers over and over again to the wrong keys. Sludge behind the eyes keeps them half closed and contributes to the slowness of logic function. The "Aha! I get it!" moments are few and far between, and when they do occur, they are sufficiently after the event to be embarrassing.

Everything about me is slow except my nose, which runs with alacrity. My brain is slow, my comprehension, my composition, my gait...my life seems to be running in slow motion in comparison to the giddy antics of my dogs, who are enjoying my poor reflexes and the treats they can snatch when my attention is drawn away from my lunch or snacks. Of course I try to foil them with snacks of fruit but that doesn't work on Candy, who shows an alarming propensity to eat anything that crosses her nostrils, from curry to almonds to cauliflower to sweet fruits.

My nose, on the other hand, seems to have moved into superspeed. It can go from clear to "ACK! I CAN'T BREATHE!" to a compromise of one side open, the other side closed, all in the matter of a single minute. I should be owning stock in Kimberly-Clark so I could get some dividends back on the gross of Kleenex boxes I've gone through in the past few days.

Little by little my brain functions seem to be returning, soldiering through the sticky sludge that pollutes their environs to begin to rebuild what is left of my inundated brain, rather like slogging through the layer of mud after a flood. I'm still tired...I wanted a nap after I expended all that energy on a shower a couple of hours ago!...but Hubby says I must be improving since my curiosity is returning and I am asking questions again, instead of just groaning and hacking.

Speaking of Hubby, there's the one bright spot in this, one of my less enthusiastic adventures. Without complaint he has endured my crankiness, whining, moaning and various unpleasant noises that go with an upper repiratory infection. He's brought me tea and fruit and juice, opened and closed windows and doors, endured my alternating needs for heating and cooling, and has generally been a really great sport about this whole thing.

On balance, icky germ or no, I think I'm pretty lucky.