At the Risk of Sounding Like Sicky McSickerson

I caught a cold.  Hmmmmm  I wonder how?  I'll thank Snot-rag Norma later.  So here's my new lease on life.  For 2011.  Actually it was for 2010.  Where DID the time go?  I try to rest and sleep when I am sick.  Yes I did take a bus and cross a border the day after I crushed my tiny, tiny toe.  But when I got Dengue fever, I layed in a bed and only got out for blood draws and Doctor's visits for two whole weeks.  And it was heaven.

Heaven because at one point in my life, I went 12 years with using only three sick days.  I'm not kidding.  And one time I was lying about being sick (sorry Jennifer.  It was in 2002.  It was for a good cause.  And I'll never forgive myself.)  But the point is not that I never got sick.  The point is that I was chronically at work.  Every day.  For 12 years.  Save for my vacations, and OOH the vacations.  I mapped them out long before January 1st every year and knew exactly how many days I had and scheduled flights around Holidays and weekends so as to maximize my time off.  When Advisors went to a PTO system in 2005, I was the only employee who technically gained 5 more days of vacation because I never used my sick days.  I forewent (is that the past tense of the word forego?) some weddings and funerals and those little "me" days people take to get shopping done or whatever, in order to have an extra day in some foreign country.

I went to work sick.  We all did.  If you called in sick at a job like I had, you would just come in the next day to twice the work.  So it was never really worth it. 

And now, without a job, or a home for that matter, I have the luxury of laying on a couch and watching TV when I don't feel well.  And it's MAGIC.  I don't recover any faster, but I feel really GOOD being able to be lazy like this.  For the last four days, I have:

• taken one shower
• brushed my teeth maybe twice?
• watched a marathon of House
• watched a marathon of Bones (oh M. G. I'm in love with that bearded redhead.)
• watched Stepmom
• watched the last half of that crazy Bride movie with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson
• watched parts of Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler
• watched a reunion episode of Jersey Shore just to see what all the fuss is about
• forgot the names of the ten other movies I watched on TV...
• lost Nicole's dog twice, both times finding him under her bed (DUH on the second time. I know.)
• made gallo pinto
• made spaghetti
• watched several episodes of Bonanza in Spanish which made me miss my dad
• left the house once

And here is the story of me leaving the house:

I got a knock on the door.  It was the next door neighbor, who happens to be the son of our landlord.  He had his phone in his hand and said it was Nicole.  Nicole who probably wishes I would spring for a cell phone, but I won't.  Anyways, she says to me that her car is in the shop and she is still one hour away and they close in ten minutes and could I PLEASE walk down and pick it up?  Because otherwise we will have no car for the whole weekend.  Yah no probs I says I says.  I slap on some sunscreen and sunglasses and I'm off.  But the gate to our little complex is shut and I don't have a clicker.  I go back and make the landlord's son open it for me.  He says, "you come back?" And I say, "yes, but I'll have the car and it has the clicker."  So I walk and I walk and I walk and it's only a two lane highway and I have to do calisthenics every time a car comes so they don't hit me and I don't touch the grass on the sides of the highway which might as well be molten hot lava, because who knows how many snakes and scorpions it contains?  This is a very real fear people.  I get there.  I get the car.  I drive it (p.s. first time driving a car in like months.) back to our house, watching the odometer click off 1/2 mile.  Pretty good.  Exercising.  Sweet.  Losing weight.  Probably ten pounds.  Yes!  Then I look for the clicker.  Not there.  &^$^#$.  It's so hot, and there's not a ton of shade to park in, and then I decide to go and yell for the landlord's son, but I have to walk down the highway a bit again.  He doesn't hear me.  A man in a car yells and holds out his hand as if he's gonna grab my butt.  I'm so over this scene.  So I decide to take a nap in the car.  Too hot.  Then I notice two bicyclists coming up our hill.  My first and immediate thought is that these men can give me a boost over the eight foot gate.  In hindsight I should have just parked Nicole's car next to the gate and used IT to boost me.  Oh well, that's not what I did.  What I did was go up to them, (they are resting, we live on a hill.) and say in broken Spanish:

"You help me.  Over wall."

And he points at his foot which is wrapped not unlike mine when I had the bad toe and I ask him what happened and he explains that his flip flop broke.  OK.  Not now I said, rest, then you help.  So after he rests a bit we go over to the gate, and he starts to climb it.  NO I says, and pantomine the laced hands method for giving another person a boost over a wall.  He assumes the position.  I take off my shoe and stick my foot in his hands.  His hands are right next to his you-know-what, and because I have NO upper body strength, I'm pretty much digging and digging and digging my foot around in the you-know-what, and because I am mortified and embarrassed, I can't focus on the task at hand and the scaling of the fence takes way longer than it should.  Finally I get up there, and I'm straddling the fence.  I yell for him to throw me my shoe and say THANKS, and as he walks away, he's got both hands on his low back and he's making "ouch my back hurts" noises. 

THANKS is right.  THANKS for NOT waiting a mere five seconds for me to get safely behind the wall to make it painfully obvious that I am fat and just broke your back.