Posts Tagged ‘cough’

4
Feb

And tired always followed sick….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno    in Chaos, random funny stuff

  

I am sick… 

and…. Well, you know the rest. If you don’t, then you need to go buy Bill Cosby’s Himself.  My all-time favorite stand-up routine. I’m talking about laugh-until-you-can’t-breathe funny. Doubled-over-in-tears funny. Seriously, if you’ve never seen it, consider yourself comedically deprived. If you have seen it, feel free to post your favorite lines in the comments. 

Image from Amazon.com

But seriously, I am really sick. Major chest congestion, relentless cough. Those of you who’ve birthed a few babies no doubt understand how terrifying the term “relentless cough” is. For the same reason that I no longer jump rope, I live in fear of being caught off guard by a surprise coughing fit before I have a chance to cross my legs. Those of you who have as yet not offered up your bladder as a prenatal trampoline or had a part of your body referred to as a “canal” are laughing at me. Go ahead. Your time will come. And when it does, maybe I’ll be old enough to have finally surrendered to the joy that is Depends, and you won’t be laughing anymore—not because you feel sorry for me, but because then you’ll realize that laughing is right up there with sudden coughing. Not so funny anymore, is it?  

Where was I? Oh, yeah–I was right here, in my fuzzy pink leopard robe, with my unwashed hair (washed my face, though—huge sense of accomplishment) and my Halls throat lozenge.  

In addition to being sick, I am (here it comes…) tired. Oh-so-very-tired. Exhausted, really. Comatose, bordering on lifeless corpse. Yesterday afternoon about 5pm, I was smiling to myself because any minute He of The Cute Knees was going to walk through the door and deliver me. Being the wonderful man that he is, he would surely send me to my room (which is where I wanted to go in the first place… Some of you get that. The rest of you seriously need to watch the DVD…) and tend to the children. Then the phone rang. My bliss-bubble didn’t burst right away, because The Hubby offered to run by the grocery store on his way home. He always calls from the grocery store to find out what I need.

Sometime between my giddy “Hello?” and The Hubby’s heavy sigh, all that changed. Something that was supposed to work wasn’t working, and whatever was supposed to fix it wasn’t fixing, and the remedy for a non-fixing fix is for Mr. Fix-it to find a feasible fix to fix the faux-fix. Which translates into “all-nighter.” So I handled the witching hour—I mean, the evening family time—on my own: dinner, dishes, refereeing, 15 minutes of WWF-worthy wrestling that we call “the diaper change”, and bedtime.When I finally got all the kids in bed, I was exhausted.

I slathered on a dollop of Vicks vapo-rub, popped a coconut Dum-dum in my mouth to ward off the cough (thinking that I could safely fall asleep, on account of while I could feasibly swallow a cough drop in my sleep and wake up dead, I don’t think I could actually swallow an entire lollipop, stick and all), bundled up in my robe and multiple blankets, cursed the fact that I’ve never followed through on my plan to fashion a nosewarmer out of a Breathe-right strip and Polartec fleece, and collapsed into bed. 

About 2am—I know it was 2am only because later, Riley asked The Daddy what time he finally got home, and he said “2am”—The Hubby finally made it home. I didn’t hear him come in. I didn’t realize he was home until he tried to take the lollipop out of my mouth. 

Evidently I screamed. 

 Turns out he wasn’t so sure about the whole not-being-able-to-choke-to-death-on-a-lollipop-on-account-of-it-having-a-stick-attached thing. He has evidently learned not to underestimate my ability to achieve the impossible.

It was sweet, really—The Hubby caring for me, worrying for my safety, making sure I don’t wake up dead.But somehow all I can think about is how totally and completely unsexy I must have looked, wrapped up in my pink fuzzy leopard robe, lollipop in my mouth—do you think it’s possible to fall asleep with a lollipop in your mouth and NOT drool? yeah, me neither. And by the way, I’m sure my mouth was probably wide open, seeing as how I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Which means that in all likelihood I was making some sort of sleep-type noises that if they were to come from The Hubby would be called ‘snoring,’ but which were totally not snoring because I’m a lady, and ladies totally do not snore—even when they can’t breathe through their nose. Oh, and don’t forget the icing-on-the-proverbial-cake, the fact that I reek of eau d’ Vicks Vapo rub.

Oh yeah, he wanted me….  

The really frustrating thing is that I have a laundry list (oh crap—do you have any idea how much laundry is piling up while I’m throwing my little pity party? And you can’t donate dirty clothes and then just start over with new ones. I know–I asked someone once, and they said you definitely can’t do that) of ‘to-do’s  for the adoption, none of which are becoming ‘done’s. There’s nothing funny in this paragraph. I just had to rant for a second. 

Sick and tired; tired always followed sick. I am both.

 And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Bill Cosby DVD to go watch. With my legs crossed….

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18
Oct

You say ‘rant,’ I say ‘making the world a better place’….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno    in random funny stuff

Once upon a time, I considered writing self-help books. Only problem was that I’ve never really been good enough at anything, and I’m fairly certain you have to have mastered the topic in question before you can credibly impart your wisdom to others.

But in the midst of this chaos and ineptitude that I live with on a daily basis, I do occasionally find isolated gems of wisdom that—while they don’t completely elevate me to the status of “ept”—make me at least feel like I have something to offer to make the world a little better place.

1.  Quit teaching your kids to “cover their cough/sneeze with their hand.” I know, it’s what they told us to do when we were kids. But when you think about it, spraying your bodily fluids into your hand is even more germalicious than just spraying them into the air. I mean, a kid (or a grown-up) sneezes or coughs into their hand, and then proceeds to touch doorknobs and shared markers and desktops and waterfountain buttons and faucet handles, not to mention other kids. Eeewww. 

Solution: Cough into the crook of your elbow. You hardly ever see people going around grabbing stuff with the crook of their elbow, right? 

2.  While we’re on the topic of germs, next time you’re in the produce section, watch a mom as she picks out apples. Chances are she won’t just grab five apples and drop them into her bag. No, she’ll carefully consider each one, turning them to inspect for bruises or holes, and in the process she’s bound to touch nearly every apple in the bin before selecting her five.

You know where her hands have been? I have seen mothers (guilty whistling) change diapers in their car before they head into the grocery store. Most moms are also obsessive about the cleanliness of the various orifices in their children’s heads, and will attend to such hygeine before taking their little darlings into a public venue. And I’m going to tell you something else: when it comes to anti-bacterial hand gel, we all see it as something that protects US from other peoples germs, so the liklihood that someone is going to squirt on some sanitizer BEFORE going into the store is about 0.0004%.

I’m not trying to dissuade you from eating produce. But when you think about all the people who’ve touched it (not to mention the people who actually picked it—they don’t have restrooms with hot running water and soap out in the middle of the orchards), doesn’t it make sense to scrub it with a little soap and water BEFORE you eat it?

3.  “Neil Diamond” and “Barry Manilow” should never be mentioned in the same sentence, unless the connecting words are “…rocks way harder than….” And that really doesn’t make sense, given that Barry Manilow doesn’t rock at all. If you doubt the veracity of my statement (the part about Neil Diamond, not the part about Barry Manilow. I mean, the fact that Barry Manilow doesn’t rock isn’t exactly up for debate, right?), then you obviously haven’t dipped your toes any further into the greatness that is Neil Diamond than “Sweet Caroline” and “Forever in Bluejeans.”  So before you mock me, go old school. Do a YouTube search on Solitary Man; Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show; Cherry Cherry; You Got To Me; Kentucky Woman; Thank The Lord For the Nighttime; Holly Holy. Until then, it’s really not up for debate.

4.  DRIVERS: Pedestrians have the right of way. Especially pedestrians crossing parking lots with three children in tow and one more on their hip. You are in a climate controlled vehicle listening to your choice of tunes on your CD player. They are walking in the heat and humidity or the cold or the rain or the wind, listening to the sounds of children who have already begun the begging even before they’ve crossed the threshold. Yield.

5.  PEDESTRIANS: When crossing a parking lot in front of a waiting car, would it kill you to walk STRAIGHT across the lane instead of DIAGONALLY? I mean, we all remember that the hypoteneuse of a triangle is longer than the base, right? And while I’m on the subject—I’m not saying you should actually run, but if you slow down on purpose just because you know I have to wait for you…well, I guess there’s not really anything I can do short of running you down. But lets just say that if while your ambling across the road in front of me a grackle poops on your head, I’m going to laugh at you and not even feel bad about it. So there.

6. The word “with” is a preposition. It begs for an object. Please, be kind to poor neglected “with” and give it the object it so rightly deserves.  Should I explain? Okay: “Do you want to come with?” My head nearly exploded just typing that. Junior year of high school, my English class dared Mrs. J to say “ain’t” after learning that she had never uttered that simple, maligned syllable. Ever the good sport, she did–and in the process had a complete conniption fit. I thought someone was going to have to get the nurse. Now I know how she felt. It’s just wrong–”with…..me? them? the nice police officer?”  Some rules are just set in stone….

There you have it, 6 principles that could drastically improve life on this planet. Or at least challenge me to find new things to complain about….

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