One thing about being sick is that you wind up spending an awful lot of time at home. While I initially spent much of my time laying about reading and watching movies, I also get rather antsy. So, as is probably par for the course, I found myself doing all sorts of things around the house yesterday. And now the entire place is clean. And was cleaned within about a two-hour time span. It’s the strangest form of motivation ever, but it was surprisingly effective.

I even broke out the Drain-O and attacked the shower drain. For some time now, my shower drain has been what those in the plumbing profession refer to as “slow.” As in, it’s not clogged, it just takes ten minutes to drain all the water from a five-minute shower. Which means that my showers for the past who-knows-how-long were half-shower, half-involuntary foot soak.

It’s not like I did nothing about it, though. At one point, I tried using Liquid Plumr. I poured in half the bottle, waited, then ran hot water down the drain. Result? No change. Thinking I’d change tactics, and use the other option for proper use of the stuff, I filled the tub some, then poured the other half of the bottle. Result? No change. Nada.

After that, I just sort of gave up on it for awhile. I’m sure some part of my subconscious was beginning to associate showers with the sloshing of water and the complete immersion of my feet. As in, it was rather pleasant. But when I was at Walgreen’s during the week, and there was a two-for-one sale on Walgreen’s’s Imitation Drain-O, and decided I’d try using that. Why not, right?

Well, lo and behold, the Imitation Drain-O ( “compare to Liquid Plumr!” ) kicked ass on the drain, and my shower is back in business. It’s almost weird to not be sloshing water with my feet, as I have become so accustomed to it. But then again, it’s nice to know that everything is working properly. It’s like my shower is brand-new again! Which is awesome.

What’s also awesome is that, finally, I’m feeling better. Oh sure, I’m still pretty nasal, and the skin on my nose is all dry and red (maybe I should take out some stock in Kimberly-Clark, seeing as I’ve been pretty much keeping them in business over the last few days), and I’m still coughing a little bit. But I’m feeling a thousand times better, and almost back to my normal self.

I went to the zoo with Robert today, and he pointed out that the fresh air would probably do me some good. He was right. Being outdoors on such a beautiful day was great. And there was so much to see! People pointing and waving at animals whose backs were to them. People pointing and waving at other people. A little girl with some sort of toy doll she was trying to decapitate with her teeth. Oh, and yeah, there were all sorts of cool animals to see, too. It was fun.

It’s Sukkot, and while I should be celebrating the plentiful bounty of this green and brown planet, I’m instead sitting at home fighting off a bad allergy attack head cold something-or-other. As a matter of fact, I was earlier cursing the bounty of the earth, because I had harbored some suspicions that it was some of said bounty that is making me sick. I still remain open to that idea.

It started out this morning. That tickle in the back of my throat. That stupid little urge there which, if it could talk, would say, “C’mon, c’mon, cough, just go ahead and do it, you know you want to.” And then, you do. And you feel like you’ve been tricked immediately afterwards, because that feels damn crappy.

I hate being sick, and because I’d already had to take a sick day once this week, I hauled my ass out of bed and got moving. And, with the exception of the dreaded tickle, I felt just fine. And continued to feel fine, even when I got stuck in traffic behind some huge construction vehicle, whose top speed was like 15 mph, driving on the one lane road. Even then, I was fine.

As the day wore on, however, the weather clouded up, it decided to get windy, and before I knew it my nose was crazy runny. As in I went through half a box of Kleenex in the space of my work day. Not a good sign.

And yet, I persisted, trying pointlessly to stay optimistic and make myself believe that I was still healthy. Whoever came up with that crackpot idea about “the power of positive thinking” should be lynched. Immediately. Like, now.

On the plus side (yes, we’ll go ahead and call it that), I decided to make myself some food that I’d been too lazy to prepare before: pasta shells and cream of mushroom soup, one of my favorite comfort foods. There’s nothing quite like eating that, piping hot, out of a coffee mug. Just hold the mug in your hands, and its warmth and good flavor send your entire being to a happy place. I even pulled out a never-before-used pot, to make the pasta. It’s a tiny little pot, and perfect for a one-serving meal.

I was positively thrilled about this. While on any other day, using a brand new pot might seem trivial, or even silly. But on a day like mine today, it really was the high point of the day. And since I’m in this state of crazy allergy-cold-yucky-fuck-all-something, I’ll take what I can get.

I had an interesting little pedestrian encounter yesterday afternoon. After leaving the bank, I turned onto a neighborhood street before turning onto a major road. As I pulled up to the stop sign, I noticed a pedestrian who seemed to be crossing the street. Nothing out of the ordinary. So being the courteous driver I am, I slowed to a stop so that he could cross in front of me.

The man, replete with white hair, blue jeans, t-shirt, hat, and giant cup of soda, stopped. In the middle of the road. I stared at him. He stared at me. We then proceeded to nonverbally communicate with one another: I waved my hand and said, half out-loud, go ahead. He raised his head and said, probably out loud, “no you go ahead.” Or it could have been “are you going this way”. I should my head and repeated, again by pronouncing out loud approximately half the syllables in each word, “n(o) y(ou) (g)o!”

And finally, we seemed to understand one another. He crossed the remaining part of the street, and stood on the corner. I pulled up to the stop sign. I proceeded to turn, so that I might continue on my merry way. As I turned, I notice the man still staring at me. I stared back. He pointed again, in the direction I was going. I thought “uh, yeah, that’s the way I’m going.” And then he did this meager little thumb sign. Well, why didn’t he just say he was hitchhiking?

And what did I do? I smiled and nodded and drove away, feeling probably as bewildered as he did. Though I bet I was the one less disappointed.

Being a New Mexican, dealing with sickness is somewhat cultural. For instance, due to my less than perfect health yesterday, I knew I needed to do something to help me feel better. While talking to a friend of mine on the phone, she reminded me that I should probably stock up on vitamin C. In my dazed stupor, it seems I’d completely forgotten to do that.

Eventually, I did get hungry and wanted to eat something for dinner. Usually when you’re sick, the tendency is to lean toward eating bland, simple foods. Here’s where culture kicks in. In New Mexico, the solution is always the same: green chile. Eat anything you want (or almost anything), and as long as it involves green chile, you’re good to go. The theory is, basically, that the best way to get healthy again is not to suppress symptoms, but rather to burn them out.

After being cooped up all day at home in bed, I thought it’d be nice to go out. I was not keen on driving myself, though, given how light-headed I’d been all day, so my partner, Robert, picked me up and took me out. We headed for Subway, where I could not only get a fresh sub sandwich, but a fresh sub sandwich loaded with green chile. This is exactly the ticket to regaining health. Lots and lots of green chile. Did you know that a single green chile packs more vitamin C than an orange? It’s amazing stuff.

While eating my sandwich at Subway, it came to my attention that there was muzak coming from the ceiling speakers. Not a bad thing, necessarily. But then I realized that the clearly quite crazy Subway employees had the local soft pop station on. And because it was at night, the stunningly horrible “DJ” Delilah was on the air. Hearing that monotone voice of hers did not make me feel any better. I mean, listening to poorly written “love” songs and then hearing sappy discussion in between? That’s fodder for depression, that is.

I spent the day home from work today. Which was weird for me, to say the least. Growing up, I never missed a day of school, unless it was a Jewish holiday. I could have spent half the night awake praying to the toilet gods (because when you’re sick, monotheism goes out the window), but my parents would still insist that I go to school. Granted, had I caught something that made me so weak I couldn’t stand, I might be permitted to stay home.

This morning, I found it extremely difficult to wake up on time. I dragged myself out of bed nearly 45 minutes after my usual time and stumbled around my apartment trying to get ready for work. I showered, made myself presentable, tossed together a lunch, grabbed a fresh green chile cheese roll, and headed to work.

I got to work, walked over to my room, tossed all my stuff down, and sat at my desk. Without really being aware of it, I started zoning out, and didn’t come to until one of my supervisors looked at me and said, “Are you okay?” To which I shrugged and said “Uh huh.”

After about a minute, I realized that I was not, in fact, okay, and that I felt light-headed. It didn’t take much convincing from my supers’ parts to send me home to bed. I was pretty out of it. What’s weird was that I didn’t feel any of the tell-tale signs of sickness: no sore throat, no coughing, no nothing.

I made it home and shuffled back to bed, where I quickly fell asleep. I’ve been spending my day going back and forth between sleep and awake. My awake time has been spent reading, eating lunch, and watching 30 Rock on DVD. The rest is helpful, thus far, so hopefully I’ll be back on my feet in no time.

If you’re reading this, that means you’ve stumbled upon All Things Phil. This site, as you can no doubt see, is a blog, and is the corner of the internet belonging to yours truly. After nearly two years of blogging community-style, I’ve flown the coop and started my very own, independent blog. So where does that leave us? Well, let’s see.

My name is Phil. I come from (and still reside in) the Land of Enchantment, and I love it here. I have very diverse interests which, for the sake of time and brevity, I’ll not mention here.

While I had considered moving my entire original archives from 360 here onto my site, I have opted not to. Instead, I decided that this site would start completely fresh, completely new. After all, why have all my past blogging here, when, for all intents and purposes, this new site should, to my mind, reflect the newness of everything I’m experiencing and doing. That said, you can still read my entire 360 archives, which can be found here.

And thus concludes this sorry excuse for an introduction to me. If you happen by again, you might find yourself shocked, awed, inspired, taken aback, humored, thrilled, scared, smiling, crying, frowning, angered, or perhaps even laughing. Oh, and a very hearty thanks to my friend Javacat for helping me learn how to go about and actually kickstart this website. I couldn’t have done it without her.