Ok, so maybe there’s one thing I hate about this time of year…
During say, seven or eight months out of the year, my nose and I are best buds. We go everywhere together, enjoying our favorite smells and generally just living the good life as only a man and his nose truly can, and all seems right with the world. Mind you, those eight or nine months typically range from March to about October, but once The Great Pumpkin is behind us and we’re nearly ready to dive headfirst into the holiday spirit, it hits me. Well, not my nose exactly, but it certainly seems to take the brunt of the damage after which we are no longer mano-e-mano, that’s for sure. Suddenly it’s a side of my nose that I’m not used to seeing – he gets all angry and inflamed, he just starts dripping all over the place out of the blue, and I don’t even know what started all of it, much less how to calm it down and make everything better! It’s like my nose is another creature altogether, I tell ya!
So from Turkey Day to Chocolates & Flowers in Hopes of Getting Laid Day, misery is pretty much my one and only pupose on this God-forsaken planet of ours. I try to stay productive and get a few things done here and there, such as writing this column and eating meals that exist only in liquid form, but anything beyond that and my sinuses put their collective feet down like Clydesdales, as if to say, “There’ll be no Ultimate Frisbee on our watch, Mister! Now get back in that house – you’re not to see the light of day again until you’ve gone through at least three boxes of kleenex … and not those tiny, travel sizes, either. We’ll have nothing less than Family Size – muhahahaha!!!”
Sometimes I have to wonder if my nose is a kleenex stockholder just for the sheer volume of tissues that I go through in a given year…
…that and the NyQuil family of products is really what helps me get through the days when I’m waging war with Old Man Sinus, let me tell you. I have a system that tends to work quite well for me – I drink a bottle of DayQuil for breakfast, another for lunch, and usually after that I’m far enough gone into the oblivion that I don’t even have to worry about eating a sensible dinner! Back that up with the heavy hitter that is NyQuil, if by some odd chance I actually do manage to awaken from my orange-induced coma, and I have an effective, although probably not approved by the Food & Drug Administration, plan for getting through the sneezy months with a minimal amount of pain and suffering.
Well, pain and suffering for everybody around me, that is, because even with all of this stuff I still tend to feel like my head has been put in a vice, underwater, with very tiny schools of fish swimming in and out of my sinuses like my body is some sort of living playground for them. Graphic, I know, but at least I had the decency to not go with an artist’s rendition of this horrific sensation for that photo at the top of this page! See, even when I’m at the bottom of my game, barely clinging onto life by a single strip of kleenex, I’m still thinking about other people – that’s just the kind of guy that I am…
However that said, I get the feeling that dose #6 of the orange stuff today is starting to wear off, so I think it’s time to bring this way too much information-laden column to a close so that I can take another shot of green Reality Be Gone before Oprah comes on. That’s one thing about being sick – sure, it can be nice to catch up on all of the lowlifes and disgruntled best friends who sue each other every afternoon on the half a dozen people’s court shows that air from 1pm to 4pm, but when you’re nearing that four o’clock hour and you start to hear chanting of “Oprah’s on!” in the distance, it’s comforting to know that oblivion is only 2 tbsp. away.
Sorry, fans of the O, but unless she’s giving away kleenexes to everyone in her audience, there are some things that even a sick man with nothing better to do can’t endure…