Post-nasal drippings

Not the most attractive title, but not the most attractive symptoms, either. I don't know what this virus is--but virus I'm sure it must be. It kept me home from work for two days two weeks ago--and I haven't taken a sick day in at least five years. Eva, who usually just wills herself to ignore the symptoms, picked it up a week after I did, and she took sick time, too. She's even willing to cut a walk short, which is unheard of, but her knees wobble a bit, even when she tries to pretend she's feeling better.

The heart of it all is a steady discharge of bright red snot, filling enough tissues to keep Scotties in dividends for the quarter, and slipping in gluey strings down the back of the throat. Coughing it all up is not much of an improvement. The symptoms also got to me when I tried to take George for a walk--the not-very-cold winter air just caught my throat and upper lungs and squeezed until breathing became too painful to do without an act of the will. I can only imagine what the cold was turning that red muck to, in my bronchial tubes.

Recovery is a bit hit and miss--but at least people are no longer laughing at my attempts to talk--other than to laugh at what I say, of course, even when I'm not trying for a laugh. The effects have been startling. The other day, I was trying to explain to my pop culture class on the Imaginary Indian the impact of the voice of the Chief in Disney's Peter Pan, and to my surprise, I could just do the voice, all the way down to the bottom of "burn 'um at staaaaaaaaake...." When I was little and seeing the movie for the first time, that threat, in that rumble, scared the willies out of me. Now, it's the symptoms that make it possible that have me worried.

But I can finally again take George out in the dark-again mornings--dark because daylight savings has pushed the morning sunrise back out of season. (Holt from my morning class offered a joke he'd heard about DST: "Only the government could take a perfectly good blanket, cut it in half, and sew the bottom half back on top of the top half, and say it had now made a longer blanket.")

And two things are clear about the turning of the seasons: the bunnies are beginning to turn grey along their backs, and they are not in small knots of  four to seven anymore.  Pairs are even rare. Snowshoe hare mating season must be over. Richard considered that thought at my office door today, then offered this little bon mot: "Did you know a doe rabbit can get pregnant again the same day she gives birth?" No, I had not known that. I'm not sure what to do with the fact, other than file it away to drop into another conversation with someone else, some other time. A sure-fire attention-grabber.