Thank God for my iPod.
Without it, I’d have to hear the noise of The World’s Loudest Vacuum Cleaner. As it is, I have Alice Smith cranked up to the stratosphere, and that’s better by far. Why is The World’s Loudest Vacuum here? Good question. And while I’m not going to say out right why, I will say that it has everything to do with this morning’s weather. Not content to simply make mine and everyone else’s commutes much, much longer than we’ve ever known, it would appear that Mother Nature decided that my office was in need of some personal attention. Luckilly, I wasn’t the one who arrived to find a flooded desk.
Two whole hours. That’s how long it took me to get from home to work this morning. And this is a jaunt that take me a little over twenty minutes on unlucky days. On federal holidays, I can get from my front door to work in twelve minutes. But not this morning. This morning, I got to sit and creep along with my fellow drivers as we struggled to get the hell out of Johns Creek. But once I’d made it over the city line into Alpharetta, we were all turned back. Some fallen tree or downed power line or something of that nature. What it was doesn’t matter. What it did was set me back another full hour in getting to work. So much so that when I got to the corner of Haynes Bridge Road and Old Alabama, I went to Kroger instead. For one thing, I could stretch my legs. For another, I needed Tylenol of the extra strength variety. And besides, its not like I was going to be any less late.
So finally, I got here. Of all the mornings to go back to work after a day out sick, this had to be the worst return of them all.
Alice Smith is over. Alice Coltrane is next. The World’s Loudest Vacuum has stopped sucking outright, but one never knows when it might suck again. Better to be prepared than sorry.
So yesterday. I don’t know what hit me. Could’ve been food poisoning, because that’s what it felt like. But Nikki and I ate mostly the same things on Sunday. On Sunday evening I felt less than great, but come Monday, I was far from all right. Of course, I could’ve been hit by the stomach flu thing that’s been flitting around our office. Whatever it was, it shut me down for the whole day and left me virtually worthless. I figured that even if I wasn’t going in to work, at least I could do some more research for the next Drama Club production. But no, that wasn’t going to happen. Just the mere act of reading made me dizzy. It was like I was nine years old again, riding along in the back of my mom’s Ford LTD station wagon and getting car sick, only there was no car.
Nikki came home from work in the afternoon and took care of me. She brought me store-brand Emetrol, two flavors of Pedialite and some chicken soup. She’s good to me that way.
And after a night of Nyquil-induced knock-out sleep, I woke up this morning feeling mostly normal, aside from a sore throat from being over-worked and a stuffy head from being unable to take my allergy meds the day before. While I’m moving slower today than usual, kind of like a well-dressed sloth, I think I’m going to be fine in the long run. Was able to go to lunch with no extra-special effort, which is a good sign.
Huh. Just saw a weather update. Might snow tonight.
Joy.
