Randomday - Walking and Whooping with a little Barking

I'm calling Randomday in the middle of the week.

Last week around this time I came down with the worst cough of my life.  I get hoarse, sore throat frequently during the winter months, aggravated by teaching and allergies, and I'm prone to getting a cold that lingers and turns into an annoying dry cough.  This was different... it came with chest congestion and severe fits of coughing that were only kept barely manageable through parent-teacher conferences by frequent cups of hot tea and nearly constant consumption of cough drops.

Did you know that the newer Halls cough drops have "pep talks" on the wrappers?  "Flex your can-do muscle."  "Impress yourself today."  Mildly amusing.

Anyway, Monday I had next to no sleep and had to excuse myself twice from the classroom to go outside to cough because I was afraid I'd throw up in front of the 8th graders.  And there is no worse nightmare, unless it is ... something else that could happen from coughing too hard in front of the 8th graders.  But anyway, I dragged myself to the doctor afterwards and he prescribed antibiotics.  It should be treated like walking pneumonia or whooping cough, he said.  Personally I'm going with walking pneumonia because it sounds cooler, and I've had my shots for whooping cough.  But I've been doing plenty of whooping too.  Yesterday I stayed home and rested, which I desperately needed, and today I'm feeling almost human again but very tired.  Quarta's got the punies though, so she stayed home today.

I have been drinking so much hot tea with lemon that I'm a little sick of it.  This is a strange thing for me, because I love hot tea.

I'm also supposed to put Vicks on my chest and the soles of my feet.  It brings back mildly unpleasant childhood memories, but putting it on the feet is new and intriguing.  It actually seems to help.  I have no idea why.

Tomorrow is the final exam in all three of my Latin classes.  And then grading.  I did a bit of knitting while lying in bed resting, but things will probably be quiet on the blog front for several days as I cope with catching up and grading.

We had an unidentified dog in our backyard today.  Steve thought it was a German Shepherd but when I saw it it was too small and looked more like... a coyote.  Do coyotes come into backyards during the daytime in the close-in suburbs in the rainy parts of the Northwest?  And this one was barking at me, not howling.  But I googled "Do coyotes bark?" and apparently, their Latin name is "canis latrans", which means, of course, barking dog.  I don't know.  But I just fetched Bilbo back inside for the night, just in case.  Smudge will have to fend for himself, but he's probably safe in his hidey-hole.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook, "If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman there to hear, is he still wrong?"  So I quipped back... "That depends... if he's in the forest because he was too proud to ask for directions, then yes."

And that is all the brilliance I have to share for the foreseeable future.