May the Phlegm Be With You!

With apologies to George Lucas, I have been felled by the least important, least noticeable object in the universe. A mere dot on the back of a mere dot. I'm speaking, of course, of the microbe of doom. Yet it and its unsavory minions conspire to expand and fill every corner of sanity I dare believe exists within me with a golden, luscious, dripping pus. And down I go.

This is all toward me apologizing for being remiss in my blogging schedule. I confess: It has been 15 days since my last blog. (No doubt, some will rejoice.) To the sincere blogger, of course, the world seems to halt and nothing occurs. No news stories, no drama, no change of hearts or undos. Nothing was missed. Then, when we reappear, we play catch up and the world seems to suddenly shift into high gear.

The last thing I remember was a football game. And nachoes. And the cheese spilling on the computer keyboard. Then the symptoms of the Cold to End all Colds appeared. By Tuesday, the deal with the devil was struck: just get me through this week in one piece and I shall write a story with you as the hero. (I'm still working on that project, but Milton has the edge there.) Unable to be bedridden, I clambered to the office and shared my collection of microbes with my colleagues--fair compensation for them having once before shared theirs with me. I had to do that, had to save myself for the weekend!

Ah, the weekend! That fair-weathered friend who embraces us all with loving tears of joy! Or else condemns us to the death-bed and the wasting of precious time. Not for me. I dragged my drugs with me through the scheduled events of a teenage daughter's latest birthday weekend. Though it did not unfold without some disappointment (partly due to my germ-hampered planning and partly due to the whimsy of Fate), it shall leave us all better prepared for the festivities next year. It is a much more important milestone than this year's, anyway. An automobile is involved. Or some keys, perhaps.

And then the drive back, the sleep of the dead, the waking of the living, and snow--precious, dainty, horrific snow! Enough to ruin an innocent drive yet not enough to close the schools. With the local news cheerfully broadcasting Stay At Home alerts for the dangerous 1 inch of white we received, I found the highways impeccably bare. I had to chuckle as I drove along every time I spied a truck off the side of the road. Kids these days! Always trying to get themselves in trouble. So to the empty parking lot I eventually arrived, full of whimsy and the hope, however small, that students will misinterpret the "two hour delay" as "full day delay" and fill my classrooms with emptiness.

You know the drugs are working well whenever I wax wantonly poetic and pause only to lift mug (coffee) to mug (face) as I once again set my fingers to the keyboard, pontificating the merriment of the mind, and once again (yes, another 'once again'!) bother to bore the vast unwashed masses who haunt the recesses of recess of....

All right, I'll stop. "Please make it stop!" Stop talking to yourself. "I'm not talking to myself!" And mind all those exclamation marks! "I am minding all of my exclamation marks!" Sign off now. "You sign off!" No, you! "No, you!" Shut up! "You shut up!" Stop repeating after me! "Stop repeating after me!" Well, you're a nincompoop! "Well, you're a nincompoop!" You're the nincompoopery king! "You're the nincompoopery king!" No, you are! "No, you are!" Stop or I'll kill you! "Stop or I'll k--"


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(C) Copyright 2010-2011 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.