ok, back to the ridiculous
Or the ridiculously gross, as the case may be.
I suspect that no one really wants to hear about my bad cold, but I feel like I'm under water and my voice sounds like Paul Robeson (though I still can't sing "Old Man River") and I've just gotta kvetch a little. So, today I've been wondering: exactly how much mucus can the human body produce? You'll be relieved to know that I have neither quantified nor qualified the goo I've been expelling from my head, but I can report that I went through an entire box of 144 2-ply "ultra soft (so why is my nose sore and red?) and strong" tissues in two and a half days. Considering that I was raised to make the absolute most out of each tissue, and that I was conscious for maybe about 12 hours during that time? Well, that adds up to a whole lotta nose blowing and productive coughing, my friends.
And this line of thought has gotten me fondly remembering the trip K and I made to la pharmacie in France several summers ago. We were driving through Provence, and I had a wicked cough. I wasn't too confident speaking my very not fluent French, so, I carefully studied the "At the Chemist" section of my phrase book while K and B and I had lunch one afternoon. I memorized how to squeak out "Hello. I need something for a cough. Do you have something for a cough? Some cough syrup, perhaps? Or cough drops?" I was so busy rehearsing my side of the dialogue that I went in quite ill-prepared for the pharmacist to do anything other than mutely hand me a bottle of Miracle Cure. So when the woman behind the counter started asking me questions about my symptoms? Eek! Even K's more extensive French vocabulary wasn't helpful enough. But, let me tell you, watching a pharmacist try to pantomime "phlegm" was, in retrospect, fantastically entertaining. At the time, of course, it was just mortifying.
And speaking of mortifying, while typing that last paragraph, I sneezed. But I didn't manage to cup my hand over my mouth with enough care. Instead of hitting the palm of my hand, I sneezed through the little tunnel of curled fingers. And now? There's a wad of phlegm. Somewhere. In my apartment. I'll be damned if I can find it. Ew. How fast is a sneeze? One hundred miles per hour? Phlegm traveling that fast could have slipped in between books on a shelf, for crying out tears.
Just something for you to think about the next time you come to town for a visit, K....
I suspect that no one really wants to hear about my bad cold, but I feel like I'm under water and my voice sounds like Paul Robeson (though I still can't sing "Old Man River") and I've just gotta kvetch a little. So, today I've been wondering: exactly how much mucus can the human body produce? You'll be relieved to know that I have neither quantified nor qualified the goo I've been expelling from my head, but I can report that I went through an entire box of 144 2-ply "ultra soft (so why is my nose sore and red?) and strong" tissues in two and a half days. Considering that I was raised to make the absolute most out of each tissue, and that I was conscious for maybe about 12 hours during that time? Well, that adds up to a whole lotta nose blowing and productive coughing, my friends.
And this line of thought has gotten me fondly remembering the trip K and I made to la pharmacie in France several summers ago. We were driving through Provence, and I had a wicked cough. I wasn't too confident speaking my very not fluent French, so, I carefully studied the "At the Chemist" section of my phrase book while K and B and I had lunch one afternoon. I memorized how to squeak out "Hello. I need something for a cough. Do you have something for a cough? Some cough syrup, perhaps? Or cough drops?" I was so busy rehearsing my side of the dialogue that I went in quite ill-prepared for the pharmacist to do anything other than mutely hand me a bottle of Miracle Cure. So when the woman behind the counter started asking me questions about my symptoms? Eek! Even K's more extensive French vocabulary wasn't helpful enough. But, let me tell you, watching a pharmacist try to pantomime "phlegm" was, in retrospect, fantastically entertaining. At the time, of course, it was just mortifying.
And speaking of mortifying, while typing that last paragraph, I sneezed. But I didn't manage to cup my hand over my mouth with enough care. Instead of hitting the palm of my hand, I sneezed through the little tunnel of curled fingers. And now? There's a wad of phlegm. Somewhere. In my apartment. I'll be damned if I can find it. Ew. How fast is a sneeze? One hundred miles per hour? Phlegm traveling that fast could have slipped in between books on a shelf, for crying out tears.
Just something for you to think about the next time you come to town for a visit, K....
posted by D of D&K at 10:19 PM
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