the cold conundrum

i have a cold. ish. it's more flu than cold because of the aches and exhaustion and fever. but that part's gone and now i'm left with the remnants: the stuffiness, coughing, and big-headed feeling. but that last part might be because i'm a published author now.

tangent. let's start over.

i have a cold. this means i can't breathe through my nose (too stuffy), i can't breathe through my mouth (it makes me cough), and i have to get oxygen somehow. i'm thinking of growing gills so i can breathe underwater.

do fish cough?


furthermore, my nose runs constantly. how can i be stuffy and have a runny nose? don't those things cancel each other out? they should.

moreover my voice is now a full octave lower than it normally is. this happened once before. my sister-in-law stacy was having a birthday (i don't know which one but i'm thinking it was her thirtieth) and her husband mark sent everybody in the world blank video tapes and asked them to record a birthday greeting and send it back so he could make a birthday video for her. dave was learning to play the guitar so he played and we both sang "happy birthday". we didn't have kids yet so we couldn't just force them to do it--it was all us. but i had a cold. so i sang on the same notes as dave. seriously low. i sounded like a man and it was humiliating. but i did it for stacy because there was no one else to take my place. it was embarrassing. i can just see her and mark laughing at it and rewinding over and over just to hear my man-song.

tangent. let's move on.

so now i teach the music at church to the kids aged 18 months to 11 years old. and again, i have a cold. ish. wait, we already covered that. moving on.

teaching music to kids with a cold...it's delightful, let me tell you. not only do i sound like a man, but i look kind of like one too. all haggard and worn, glazed-over eyes, dull stringy hair, shiny red nose, whiskers and a beer belly.

wait, scratch those last two.

and i don't know how the others describe a man, but let's just say they do.

so i'm standing in front of the kids, holding a tissue to my nose so it doesn't drip, coughing, and singing a full octave lower than normal. don't forget that my head is all stuffy so i can't really hear myself, and singing when you can't hear is not a good move.

so let's look at this in a more succinct way:

1. stuffy nose
2. runny nose
3. cough when i breathe
4. can't hear
5. sound (and look) like a man
6. short fingernails
7. i'm exhausted
8. i can't sleep (see reasons 1-3)
   

i don't know what short fingernails has to do with my cold conundrum, but i'm adding it to the list. oh, and how about when you answer the phone in that deep man voice and somebody actually mistakes you for your husband? that should probably be on the list somewhere. i guess it is. number 5.

so i'm singing to these poor kids, trying to teach them this impossible song that we've been working on for 3 weeks and nobody knows a single word. i offer candy to the first person who can tell me one line of the song.

nobody gets candy (except for me, of course).

and i'm thinking, why are you here? all these things contradict themselves: you sound like a man, you cough when you breathe so you try not to breathe but you do have to sing a song, your nose is running, your nose is stuffy, you're tired because you got no sleep for two nights in a row, and your fingernails are short.

so what's my point?

i don't know, i can't think straight. i have a cold.

ish.