Flu-induced Monologue

I woke up this morning with a rotten stomach ache.

I drove into work, thinking it was our Valentine’s Dinner still giving me grief; but it kept getting worse and worse and pretty soon I felt that achy chill on the back of my arms and across my scalp. I lay on the floor of my office for a little while, but the florescent lights hurt my eyes. Suck it up, I said, and proceeded to work on our church brochure. About halfway through, I wasn’t sure which end was going to erupt first, but I was sure that I needed to be home.

At home, I pulled out the Land’s End sleeping bag, donned my warmest sleepwear and huddled up on the couch, hoping to interest myself in a documentary about war called Why We Fight that Jon recommended to me. It was certainly thought provoking, but the fact that they didn’t even discuss my reason annoyed me into a headache. That or I just wrenched my neck trying to see the television. You know, it doesn’t matter where you place it, there’s never a comfortable place to watch TV lying down. You’d need to have it parallel with your shoulders and it would have to be titled at the angle of your head on the pillow.

So here I lie. Shaking like a heroin addict who needs a fix, blankets piled high with my neck and shoulders sore from trying to type on a laptop that’s not sitting parallel with my shoulder or tilted at the angle of my head on the pillow.

And I’m thinking strange thoughts. I wonder what it will be like just before I die. Come on, I’m not being morbid, I’m just curious. And no, I’m not saying this flu is comparable to death. I just wonder if I’d have the strength or the presence of mind to smile at my wife and tell her I love her. Scratch that, we’re going together, we’ve already decided it. (Perhaps I should delete that if any of my insurance people are reading.) But am I the only one who has spent many nights in bed thinking about what I’ll say on my death bed? With my luck, I’d be killed instantly, doing nothing important, on a bread-and-butter day. I guess I’d better write it down and file it in the “Do Not Open Until I Die” folder. Be right back.

Ok, back.

Sad that I’ve spent about 56% of the time writing this post hoisting myself up to see where the backspace key is. But considering I slept 10 hours last night, my brain’s not that tired. Just my body. And of course, it’s winning the battle here, making it painfully obvious that I should be lying here with my eyes closed instead of putting my sob story on my blog.