My Pets Are So Mean

That little bastard of a cat – he refused for five days straight to make me any hot chocolate, even though I stopped on the way home on the day I got sick, and bought myself milk (I did not touch the cashier …).  He kept whining that he only *weighs* like ten pounds to start with and has these tiny little one-inch thumbless paws.  Mean old cat.  Just because the milk weighs more than he does and he might burn his jellybean peds.  So selfish.

The dog, for her part, refuses flatly to punch me in the back.  It’s like that boyfriend of mine, the guy I was good friends with and very briefly dated, who simply would not hit me, even when I had the most hideous flu and was loaded with chest congestion and needed it knocked loose (don’t laugh; my dad needed this done after bypass surgery and it’s recommended to whack someone in the back).  Sure, sure, your momma taught you not to hit a girl.  But I wasn’t askin’ for a paddlin’ – and, Penelope, my dear, neither would you be, if you’d just ball up your forefeet and give my lungs what-fer.  Really!

Mean old pets.  One won’t burn himself to flinders for me, and the other won’t beat me up, even with a free pass.

Meanwhile, I went in to work today.  I made it, but heck if I could breathe with my mouth closed all day.  Nothing so fun as appearing the slack-jawed yokel, but the only remedy for it is to burn my sinuses out one at a time, painfully, as the congestion shifts left to right all day long.  Slackjawed yokel it is, then.  Of course, the thing about preserving the sinuses from the burn is that the air still has to go in and out – so it just burns your throat a bit less than the nose.  Take that across the space of a good ten hours in air conditioning that makes my home climate control seem wimpy, and incorporate all the coughing fits and half-coughing fits you try to suppress in that many hours – and what you get is a chest that hurts so much it kind of makes you want to beat up on your pets since they won’t beat up on you.  Mean old pets.

To be fair, this rather nasty bronchial infection does actually seem to have done its worst by now.  As much pain as today held, it wasn’t half as miserable as the past three (non-combined …), and for that I am grateful.  Honestly, by the time a pipe burst in my house yesterday (oh yeah – everyone out there jealous of my week yet??), and the plumber stood outside in a rather beautiful soft summer rain, looking up and saying, “It’s just one cloud, right over your house!”, the litany of fresh hell really did become just a comedy routine.  I’m fortunate to have a home, even if bits of it must malfunction; I’m thankful this illness is on the petering-out end rather than its building-up period; I even like those darn pets, but don’t tell ‘em.  And pain, schmain – the truth is, I don’t even notice it compared to the way I felt Saturday through yesterday.  The humidity is fierce stuff – but it’s somewhere I can *breathe* comfortably, even if it does make me sweat.  I may be the one person in this region grateful for muggy air (and it is muggy to the tune of 3-digit heat indices).

Some other people I know?  Facing much harder things than a regimen on antibiotics.  Facing much greater pain.  Me, I’m just a comedy routine.

With stingy, rotten, mean old pets.  WAH!

I have hope tonight I will be able to sleep with my mouth closed.  Simple, comfortable - bliss ...