Chocolate Milk Is Not a Decongestant

And other things You Need To Know.

Thanks to your well wishes and $24 worth of pills (so far), I feel way better than yesterday. Yesterday I felt like I was wrapped in heavy wool. Not scratchy, though, so perhaps cotton would be a better description. Only, not cotton like sheets (300 count is very nice), more like the cotton they stick in bottles of pills. Why do they do that?

I'm feeling loopy. Not even a fun kind of Whee! Good cough medicine! kind of loopy, either.

So we went out to dinner tonight.

What can I tell you? My decision making is shot and when Eric and Caitlin both said they wanted to go, I didn't have any braincells left to rub together to say, "Uh, no thanks! I can't taste anything other than sweet, salty, sour, acid and cardboard, so going out to dinner will be completely wasted on me. Let's not!" But did I say that? No. Couldn't. Had a feeling there was a reason why I didn't want to go (other than the fact that, oh I don't know, I've got the influenza virus wreaking havoc with my system) but I couldn't get the words out. I'm still foggy, but doing a lot better.

So we went out to dinner. Emma was awake and complained about being left in her car seat. I pulled her out and sat her on my lap and she immediately turned into an octopus. There were arms everywhere, I swear! Grabbing for napkins, knives and forks, water glasses, and the plate my hot chocolate came on (I can pretend I can taste chocolate. Orange juice tastes like battery acid. Even water tastes funny and toothpaste tastes horrible.). Once she had hold of it, she did what comes naturally to babies: she shoved it in her mouth.

Caitlin, upon seeing Emma ingesting a plate as big as her head made the unfortunate mistake of laughing while drinking chocolate milk. The chocolate milk came shooting out her nose.

Now I know that commentors are forever saying (on other blogs, not mine, I'm just not that funny I guess) that the author has made them laugh so hard that they sprayed coffee/coke/water/other bodily fluids out of their noses and onto their keyboards and screens and I never knew whether to believe them or not. After having seen what happened to Caitlin, I've gotta tell ya, if you can actually make distance to reach your keyboard/screen? Then you must be laughing really damned hard. You oughtta be careful out there: you could bust a gut. Fortunately for all of us at the table, Baby Octopus included, Caitlin didn't make any distance at all but did look very surprised.

My dinner, lobster ravioli (Which tasted like...? Salt.), will be hibernating in my freezer until my sense of taste returns, because to not taste that?

Is just sickening.