I Want My Mommy!...or a girlfriend.
At around half past eight last night, I began to breathe again. I think it was around then. I just happened to notice, right as Geena Davis was fixing one of her generals with a stern glare, that I could breathe through my nose. And there was much rejoicing.
At about midnight, I started coughing.
By two, I was coughing so hard that it was actually making me retch.
It was at this point that I realised that I was screwed. I have the same plague that my mother had last week. I tried to lie down and sleep but was interrupted in increasingly shorter intervals by coughing fits rivaled only by the end of Les Miserables. I scurried around in one of my unpacked boxes, praying that the codeine cough syrup I had gotten as prescription when I had pneumonia at A&M was still with me.
No such luck. It is probably expired by now anyway. By now it was around four, and I started a search for a twenty-four hour Walgreens in my vicinity. The nearest is, for reasons unknown to me, six miles off. Apparently people in South Austin do not get sick in the middle of the night. I then remembered that my friendly local H-E-B is twenty-four, so I bundled up, got in my car, and managed to make it over there with only two fits of coughing.
I wandered in, the glare of the flourescent lighting blinding me, and tried to remember where the medicine aisle is in this particular H-E-B. Fortunately, it was close to where I was and I walked over to the cough and cold section.
There are approximately seven thousand, eight hundred ninety-five different varieties of cough and cold medicine. There's pills, gel caps, caplets with the tiny beads inside of them, and liquids. There's DayQuil, NyQuil, H-E-BQuil, Tylenol, Aspirin. Flu. Cold/Flu. Cold/Flu/Cough, Sore Throat, Sore Throat and Congestion, Congestion only (someone should spill a truckload of that on 35), Sinus/Sore Throat, and Cold/Flu/Cough/Sore Throat/Mad Cow/Congestion. All of these come in day and nighttime varieties for your sleep inducing needs.
Standing there, looking not-quite-so bewildered as I was a woman maybe a couple of years older than me. She nodded politely and we commiserated over the unseemly variety. She mentioned that she got to be her boyfriend's caretaker as he is extremely ill at the moment, and asked if I was there for myself or for a significant other. I replied, of course, in the former, she replied her hope that I feel better, and went on her way.
It was at this point that I realised that this persona with which I have been saddled is not necessarily so much out of some personality trait that I have, but more out of circumstance. Due to my current living arrangements, and indeed my past living arrangements, I -have- to take care of myself. Or I'll die.
On the drive back home, it occurred to me that I am probably not the pillar of strength and the purveyor of intimidation for which I am apparently famous. It just so happens that I've had to adapt to situations where I deal with my own illness, my own injuries. I've never had a roommate except for that short while at A&M, and she was so busy with her own self that she would not have noticed had I carked it, much less offered to pick up my codeine for me.
In other words...I'm not so much the scary softball team captain as much as the little girl that wants to be held, loved, and taken care of when she's sick. I do not mind being the team captain for a little while, because I do want to take care of the people I love. Someday soon, though, I'd like to be in a situation where someone will go to H-E-B for NyQuil for me.
At about midnight, I started coughing.
By two, I was coughing so hard that it was actually making me retch.
It was at this point that I realised that I was screwed. I have the same plague that my mother had last week. I tried to lie down and sleep but was interrupted in increasingly shorter intervals by coughing fits rivaled only by the end of Les Miserables. I scurried around in one of my unpacked boxes, praying that the codeine cough syrup I had gotten as prescription when I had pneumonia at A&M was still with me.
No such luck. It is probably expired by now anyway. By now it was around four, and I started a search for a twenty-four hour Walgreens in my vicinity. The nearest is, for reasons unknown to me, six miles off. Apparently people in South Austin do not get sick in the middle of the night. I then remembered that my friendly local H-E-B is twenty-four, so I bundled up, got in my car, and managed to make it over there with only two fits of coughing.
I wandered in, the glare of the flourescent lighting blinding me, and tried to remember where the medicine aisle is in this particular H-E-B. Fortunately, it was close to where I was and I walked over to the cough and cold section.
There are approximately seven thousand, eight hundred ninety-five different varieties of cough and cold medicine. There's pills, gel caps, caplets with the tiny beads inside of them, and liquids. There's DayQuil, NyQuil, H-E-BQuil, Tylenol, Aspirin. Flu. Cold/Flu. Cold/Flu/Cough, Sore Throat, Sore Throat and Congestion, Congestion only (someone should spill a truckload of that on 35), Sinus/Sore Throat, and Cold/Flu/Cough/Sore Throat/Mad Cow/Congestion. All of these come in day and nighttime varieties for your sleep inducing needs.
Standing there, looking not-quite-so bewildered as I was a woman maybe a couple of years older than me. She nodded politely and we commiserated over the unseemly variety. She mentioned that she got to be her boyfriend's caretaker as he is extremely ill at the moment, and asked if I was there for myself or for a significant other. I replied, of course, in the former, she replied her hope that I feel better, and went on her way.
It was at this point that I realised that this persona with which I have been saddled is not necessarily so much out of some personality trait that I have, but more out of circumstance. Due to my current living arrangements, and indeed my past living arrangements, I -have- to take care of myself. Or I'll die.
On the drive back home, it occurred to me that I am probably not the pillar of strength and the purveyor of intimidation for which I am apparently famous. It just so happens that I've had to adapt to situations where I deal with my own illness, my own injuries. I've never had a roommate except for that short while at A&M, and she was so busy with her own self that she would not have noticed had I carked it, much less offered to pick up my codeine for me.
In other words...I'm not so much the scary softball team captain as much as the little girl that wants to be held, loved, and taken care of when she's sick. I do not mind being the team captain for a little while, because I do want to take care of the people I love. Someday soon, though, I'd like to be in a situation where someone will go to H-E-B for NyQuil for me.
posted by Ivy at 05:40
1 Comments:
I wouldn't make a very good girlfriend, I'm afraid, but I'm a very good mommy.
Let me know what you need, dear Ivy, and you got it.
Happy Birthday.
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