Saturday, June 19 2021

Dear Journal,

Good evening, friends and readers. Happy Saturday. The night feels young and the weather feels so mild - I hope for both of our sakes you are making the most of it. I'm still rendered useless by the world's most obnoxious cold.

Really, Alex? The most obnoxious cold... in the world? You got that right. This is a cold so obnoxious and so annoying, I have no hesitation jumping right to the extreme. Just the long, drawn out phases of this virus make it worthy of the highest anti-award I can think of.

At the moment I'm writing this, I'm in the drippy soar throat. My throat hurts only when I sneeze or cough, and both are inevitable thanks to the constant drip of mucous. This phase is pretty bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the first phase. You know that crushing dread you feel when a soar throat is beginning to form? Everybody's favorite part of a cold - and for this puppy that lasted an entire day.

I'm the last member of our clan to develop the symptoms, so watching Miles, Rodney, and Marissa I get a free preview of what is to come. Boogers. Coughing. Booger coughs. It's going to be a boogery Sunday for me.

Sip. How are you feeling today? Getting some time in to relax? I've been doing plenty of relaxing this weekend. I have been trying to make the most of my small bursts of energy between lying useless on the couch, but I've understandably fallen behind in a lot of my chores. The house - especially the kitchen - looks as good as I feel. In fact last night after ordering pizza, the kitchen descended into such a mess that Marissa and I felt compelled to admire the chaos before heading upstairs to bed.

A stack of half-empty pizza boxes on the crumb covered cutting board. Three soiled pans sitting on the stove, and one of them was still lined with congealed creamy mushroom soup from Thursday. Grated parmesan dusted the counter where we fixed some late night quesadillas. Metal and plastic dishes towered over the sink. It was quite a sight.

"Just look at this," said Marissa. "I don't mean to judge, I know you're sick. But I haven't seen our kitchen look like this since we lived in Rockford."

"Ah Rockford," I sighed. "Those were good times. Although to complete the ensemble, those pizzas should have been from Domino's."

Marissa and I took a moment to silently remember our mutual Domino's addiction. Domino's was a shameful staple in our diet when we were first married. At least once a week, we used the Domino's app on my phone to summon hot pizza, wings, and cinnamon sticks from the comfort of our first apartment.

Messes aside, we had a decent Saturday. We slept in today. I awoke to Rodney leaning into the hallway calling into our bedroom. He would follow me around the house while I hocked and sneezed my way through sleepy morning chores.

Rodney is getting the worst end of the deal this weekend. He recovered from this cold a few days before the rest of us, but now he's stuck in a house of sick people with nothing to do. While I fixed breakfast and made coffee on mental autopilot, Rodney dropped subtle hints around what we wanted to do this Saturday.

"We could play hockey," he said. His feet thumped on the floor while he dance-stepped behind me. "Or we could dig for dinosaur bones. Or we could go to Capetown and go bungie jumping." (We have Dude Perfect to thank for giving him that idea).

Even the neighbors were making the most of the beautiful day. Lucas knocked on our living room window. He and Talia were going to hang out downtown, and they wanted to know if we'd meet up later. Answering the door in my ratty robe with puffy eyes and a stuffed up nose, I feel like I didn't need to say anything beyond "Not this time, but thanks." They got the idea.

Stuck inside with us, Rodney channeled his energy into outfits (as he often does when he's feeling stir crazy). When I took him to Hy-Vee, he dressed like a ranger. Camo gloves, a camo hat, night vision goggles, and a nerf gun.

Earlier today, I walked across the street with him to McDonald's to pick up lunch. He wore is classic standby, the Miles Morales Spider-Man costume. He flashed his web-shooting hands at cars, people on bikes, and the lady behind the counter at McDonald's.

I may have been stuck on the couch, but I wrote some good code today. I finished pulling together the new program to generate this website. For those interested, I'm not longer on jekyll. I'm on my very own blogging framework. It's half-finished and still riddled with bugs, but I already moved all 713 journal entries over and there's no turning back now.

I also just barely found the energy to try a new recipe for dinner. I went with a recipe called "Thirty Garlic Clove Chicken", which is a braised chicken dish really prepared with thirty garlic cloves. Before you get too worried, know that you don't have to peel them. The cloves just form a fragrant bed for the chicken to simmer in its own juices. They say that garlic is good for the immune system, and if that's true, then I hope I gave my body enough to fight off this obnoxious cold. I want my airway back. I'm tired of the taste of my own boogers. And dammit I want to get back to cleaning my kitchen.

This too shall pass. Thanks for stopping by today, stay healthy out there and remember to eat your garlic.