Stuffy Stephy :(

This weekend has been long. It has nothing to do with the fact that my mother's parents were in town, but with the fact I have finally caught a cold. I started getting a sore on Friday after our frog dissection (which was really fun, by the way) in the car while I was driving home from school. By Saturday, I was feeling like crap and my grandma and my grandpa went with my parents to Daniel's football game, leaving Kristen and I home alone until work started.

So I'd kind of woken up and stumbled downstairs to eat some toast and made myself some Celestial Seasonings throat-tamer tea. I'd also taken some cough syrup and still didn't feel any better all afternoon. Not only that, but I was periodically exploding in sneezes and flinging all kinds of germs into the air, possibly infecting the rest of my lovely family.

At work, I made sure I didn't sneeze (which was really, really hard) and not to touch my face. I washed my hands often like a good employee so that my boss couldn't fire me for spreading my sickness to the remainder of the staff. I think Chuy caught it anyway, 'cause he said he was feeling sick today. Sorry!
Now today, because we finally, finally sold our condo in the mountains, my family minus Kristen and I was obligated to bring everything in it that we wanted to keep back down to where we live. [Ergo, due to the facts that A.) I am quite accustomed to walking downstairs in the middle of the night without the lights on and B.) we have all kinds of random furniture all over the place, I tripped over three things in a row and walked into a bench.] That took the whole day, but my sister and I had to stay because we had work to do. So, like any other good little Christian girls on a Sunday, we went to church.

Today, I was sputtering and sneezing and way beyond tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open during service. Afterwards when I was standing around with the other adults and talking, Mandee mentioned that if you gargle hydrogen peroxide and water, you get over your cold within a day. "You know how it kind of foams on your cuts and gets rid of the bacteria?" she said. "It kind of does the same thing in your throat."

So when I got home, I decided to try it.

"What are you doing?" Kristen asked skeptically from across the kitchen.

"Gargling this," I told her nonchalantly, pouring the concoction into my mouth.

I gargled for a few seconds and then spewed it across the island when an intense burning sensation closed my throat. I promptly gagged into the sink.

"Aaagnn!" I groaned loudly, pain searing my vision.

Foam started to form in my throat and make its way up through my mouth. I spit it into the sink where it continued to hiss.

The look on Kristen's face was somewhere between amused and thoroughly disgusted. "Are you okay?"

I found it within me to contain myself and look up, the pain beginning to cease. "Yeah. Whoof!"

"Does that hurt?"

"Hyaw, I did. It was kind of a good pain, though. I kind of feel a little clearer."

Then I took one of those things you use to suck snot out of babies with and sucked a little of the solution into it. I shot it up one nostril.

Bad. Idea.

I howled in pain and gripped the side of the counter, shaking my head quickly from side to side. I blew out foamy mucus into a napkin, and, after a minute, my agony came to an end. I looked at Kristen. "Well that burned like hell," I said with a straight face as I wiped my teary eyes.
She laughed and I tilted my head back to shoot it up the other.

Quote of the Day: "Flamingos are just gay storks" (Stephany Lewis*).