Ah, Valentines Day...

Ah, Valentines Day...

Long ago, some marketing director somewhere thought "You know, there really isn't anything to sell between new years and St. Patricks day. I wonder..."

And after a brief visit to his local Catholic church, and learning that a feast was held every year on February 14th to honor a couple of martyred saints, Valentines Day was truly born into all it's commercial glory. Don't get me wrong. I love celebrating the love I have for my wife. But I do that on many a day outside the 14th day of the second month. I just don't like commercialism spoiling a lovely idea. Which it does on every major holiday.

I'd boycott this year (as we do most years) but that decision was made for me. In a true "share-the-love" fest. The pink eye found it's way to the Boyo and me, and my little cold has become some sort of raging infection causing yellow/green/brown goo to come spewing forth from every orafice above my neck. (Happy Valentine) I've been in bed most of the past three days, occasionally wandering - zombie like - into the living room to the happy smiles of my kids and the concerned looks of my wife. The goo has crept up my ear tubes and formed little acoustic plugs around the internal workings of my ears, so everything sounds like a bizarre robot/auto tune voice, and my equalibrium is off a little and I tend to drift when I walk worse than a sailboat in a storm. My neck nodes are swollen to the point where swallowing hurts, which has led to sleeping in a drool pool unless I sleep in a sitting position, which while I have tried the past couple of nights, has not led to much quality nod time. Not to mention I have developed a nasty cough which usually brings up a few dozen cc's of the afore mentioned glop. Still ready for a valentine day meal?

So today I finally caved and went to a local urgent care to be poked, prodded and swabbed to find out what the heck is going on. They ruled out pneumonia and sinus infection, and my lungs sound clear, and my ears look normal. But apparently my throat looks as bad as it feels, because the swabbed for strep. Results are pending.

The good news of the day? Thanks to my little attack eyedrops, I was able to awake from my afternoon nap and open my eyes! This morning they were cemented shut with goop. So improvement there!

Now, if I can only beat this creeping crud into submission and get to a point where I can hear and stand again! Ah, Valentines Day...

More Later