Over the past few months, I have come to an important realization. I decided that I don\u2019t like being sick. Unfortunately, I have put a lot of research into making this decision. I kind of felt this way when I had bronchitis a couple of times in December, but I thought I\u2019d hold off before making a final answer.<\/p>\n
A nice little stomach virus helped me reach that answer this week.
\nI do have to say that I don\u2019t think I\u2019m the only one in the house who feels this way. We all have had different struggles this winter, which is pretty unusual.<\/p>\n
Most years, I have to handle a sinus issue or two and Bridget gets the sniffles, but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n
This year, we\u2019re like an episode of \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d without all the kissing and marrying. Each one of us has had at least one bad illness since Christmas.<\/p>\n
I did get to miss two days of work, but that meant having to make up two days of work and wading through scads of e-mail and voice mail on my first day back.<\/p>\n
This decision did not come as easily as you might think. After 24 hours of suffering from the virus, I stepped on our scale and noticed I had lost 10 pounds. I silently calculated how many more illnesses I would need before I hit my ideal weight.<\/p>\n
Quickly that thought went out of my head as I realized that I could not survive on Jell-o and Gatorade alone.<\/p>\n
In the end, it was food that made me realize how much I disliked lying in bed feeling miserable.<\/p>\n
For starters, our Girl Scout cookies arrived while I was laid up. Can you imagine looking at boxes upon boxes of Thin Mints and not even wanting to try one?<\/p>\n
Well, I wanted to try one, but I pretty much knew how that would end up so I passed. I had to wait 24 whole hours before I had my first cookies. They were the greatest cookies I had ever tasted in my life.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure those of you who know me figure that I shouldn\u2019t complain because my wife took great care of me in my darkest hour.<\/p>\n
Not really. She tried to kill me. Well, not kill, but prolong my illness.<\/p>\n
I found a can of chicken noodle soup in the cabinet after I started feeling a little better. My Mom always made me chicken noodle soup when I was sick so I figured this would do the trick.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the top of the can. It read \u201cMay 2002.\u201d<\/p>\n
A debate ensued about whether that represented the sell by date or the use by date, Maria kept encouraging me to just eat the soup.<\/p>\n
Of course the date ended up being the use by date. We don\u2019t eat a lot of canned soup, so that thing had sat there for five years or so.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t faze Maria. She told me I should eat the soup. She told me that would make the column funnier.<\/p>\n
Yeah, right. Funnier because I would get sick again and lose 20 pounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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