Face down

I spent most of Tuesday sleeping. After 12 hours in bed I got up to move to the couch. 3 hours earlier I spent a couple of minutes sending an email to colleagues telling them I would be taking a sick day. I would spend the next 10 hours on the couch before going back to bed. I didn’t do anything yesterday. Didn’t even log on. Didn’t go to get something to eat even though I was craving a Philly cheesesteak and had little food in the house. This morning I figured I had to come in to work because the boss was in town. Only he wasn’t. He was passing through yesterday.

I usually don’t take sick days. It has to be my upbringing. My mother was a working mother and couldn’t afford to take a day off to take care of her kids. Grandparents weren’t close enough (read: her parents) to quickly come over so she could work so we usually went to school even if we felt pretty bad. It appears that has carried over to my adulthood. This may be the second sick day I have taken while at this company and it has been over 10 years. A couple shots of whisky is what it takes to tough it out.

But yesterday was different. Not because I was face down in a pillow. Because I knew I could take the day off. I had been reviewing my vacation scenario and realized I had 16 days available. 16. Just about the whole month. But I already have days scheduled so it would be the whole month. Thus one day when I wasn’t feeling the greatest wouldn’t matter too much.

I sometimes feel guilty when I take that sudden day off. I don’t like putting the burden on my co-workers. I always felt better when the day was over. But then I realized it isn’t like they are doing a lot of my work or much more when I am not there. Plus I earned the time off so why not take it when I am ill. Hey, I won’t be infecting others at work.

Not sure what is ailing me. I am coughing up a lung now only every hour instead of every 15 minutes. Slight head ache and body ache. Maybe a slight fever. I felt it coming on Saturday morning. Woke up with a bit of a cough. It persisted on Sunday but it wasn’t too bad. I even woke up thinking I had a case of meningitis. But then I called myself a total idiot because 1) It wasn’t meningitis and I have no idea why I thought that, and 2) I really wasn’t sure what meningitis is so how could I have it? I then reviewed the other “itis’” I could have and was sure it wasn’t any of those. Bursitis. Tonsillitis. Bronchitis. Tendonitis. Nope, none of the other itis’ applied. Call it a cold.

It was after I finished shoveling on Monday morning that I felt sick. I figured the body ache was using those snow shoveling muscles that had been dormant for months. But as the day progressed I felt worse. I was tempted to leave work early on Monday but toughed it out.

I will hack my way through the day drinking plenty of orange juice. I will sneak out early as I will need to shovel and I must go to the food store. Beside the cupboards being bare I need toilet paper. Yep, that is what it takes to make a guy finally go to the store. Making sure they have something to wipe their ass with.

One other thing I had wanted to comment on from this weekend. The whole Plaxico Burress thing has been hilarious to me, both as a Dallas Cowboys fan and a guy who sits back in amazement wondering what kind of world some people think they live in. I first some the news on a crawl during the Florida/Florida State game on Saturday. I had to rewind the show to make sure it wasn’t a Dallas Cowboy who was in trouble (simple reality nowadays). I was relieved it wasn’t then chuckled that it was a Giant. Let those bastards deal with a distraction. Then more news came out about how it was his own gun and he shot himself. You can believe the story that it slipped and he tried to grab it as he slid down his leg but I ain’t buying it. The search for a hospital so “Harris Smith” could check in makes the story funnier.

But the coup de grace is Plaxico pleading not guilty to a weapons possession. Not guilty? Really? You claim you took the gun because of all the “bling” you were wearing and didn’t want to be robbed (like Steve Smith was?) but somehow you did not possess said gun. How could you not possess the gun that you shot yourself with? A judge should throw this out the door and give him and his lawyer a couple extra years in the clink for thinking the court is stupid. According to NY state law, this is at least 3 years in the pokey. Why do I believe he will get away with this?