It’s my blog, and I’ll use foul language if the situation warrants it.

Today I’m taking one final (I hope) sick day at home to make sure I’m 100% healthy before I expose myself to new viruses. I’m actually feeling about 95% there today; still a little congested and with a slight sore throat, but infinitely better than I was feeling at the end of last week.

Since I’m basically healthy, my plan today was to actually get some work done from home. So, I sat down on the couch, pulled my laptop out of its case (where it’s been hanging out unused since its latest trip through the airports), and started it up.

IBM startup screen.. followed by…

Fan Error.

Automatic shutdown.

Rrrrrr. RRRRRRRR! This is my primary computer, by the way - I use it daily at work and at home; it’s not just for travel.

Now, a little googling shows that the culprit is probably a bad CMOS battery, and that once replaced, everything should be fine. I’m going to hold fast to this hope, because the alternative is almost a repeat of the Great Server Fire of 2004 (well, not quite as bad, because I did back up most stuff to my desktop machine last week before I went to Hawaii. But it would still be a major pain in the rear.)

I think I’m owed some major good health and luck for the rest of this year.

Just a quick health update, for anyone who’s concerned. My lovely, wonderful new Blue Cross HMO doctor agreed to see me on a Saturday morning, since she was in doing paperwork anyway. After collecting my medical history, she glanced down my throat and instantly agreed that I still have strep. I’ve been prescribed a pretty strong antibiotic that’s targeted to this kind of infection, so we’ll see how it goes. Unfortunately, said antibiotic also has pretty strong side effects (the usual side effects caused by any antibiotic, but ALL of them and quite frequent), so I may be out of commission for a few days from the cure once the disease is taken care of.

Feeling slightly better today, but I think it’s just because I’ve learned to ignore the stabbing pain that is whatever’s-wrong-with-the-back-of-my-righ- tonsil (I suspect it’s a good thing I can’t see back there). I also stocked up on some Guava Nectar, which, as I have learned in my two “sick” trips to business meetings in Hawaii, feels great on a sore throat and is rather tasty to boot.

More couch time ahead for me. So far, Jeff shows no signs of resenting being relegated to my nurse/slave when I’m too fevery and weak to do more than walk from couch to bed to bathroom, but we’ll see how much more of this he can take! He’s rapidly surpassing my mom as being the best person to have around when I’m sick, and those of you who know my mom can probably imagine what a compliment that is!

Further proof that I am ALWAYS SICK:

Not only has my throat/tonsil infection returned, just when it was starting to feel better, but I seem to have caught a new cold virus as well (last week’s strep infection was fairly congestion-free).

Symptoms I’ve experienced in the last 24 hours, which, by the way, have been spent in meetings or in a hotel room here in Hawaii:

+ stuffy nose
+ sore throat
+ feeling like there’s something sharp STUCK in my throat
+ swollen tonsils
+ headache that feels like it’s EATING MY BRAIN
+ sore muscles
+ fever
+ vomiting (always fun with a sore throat)

Time to visit an Urgent Care facility tomorrow, methinks…

Last night, I flew to Hawaii for a 1.5-day business meeting in Waimea. The trip yesterday was fine. But this morning…. yikes. It’s been one thing after another! First, my alarm (which I set for 6am) didn’t go off. I woke up at 6:55, 10 minutes AFTER I was supposed to meet coworkers Bruce and David in the lobby of the Hilton Waikoloa (a ten minute walk through the resort from my room). When I touched the clock, it made a faint buzzing, then stopped again when I released it - loose wire?

After a frantic call to David’s cell, I took a super-fast shower. Then I dumped my contacts down the sink (I was out of it and in evening mode, so instead of opening the case and taking the contacts out, I dumped the contents out in preparation for REMOVING my contacts from my eyes, argh).

Luckily I had spare contacts. Then I realized I forgot to pack toothpaste. So I used the free mouthwash in the fancy Hilton bathroom.

At 7:05, I started walking. At 7:15, I finally reached the lobby, totally out of breath, and my abused throat KILLING me from talking on the phone before I had a drink of water.

We got stuck behind lots of slow trucks on the way up here, but finally managed to scarf down breakfast by 8:20 (meeting started at 8:30). I left my sweater in the Kamuela Deli, and had to run back across the street to grab it before the meeting. On my way up the sidewalk towards the WMKO visitor entrance, I was almost scared off the pavement by a gigantic cockroach.

Then I started having contact issues in my LEFT eye! (And a new contact!) Once it reached the super-red, constantly blinking and crying point, I excused myself to the bathroom and rinsed it with water. (Not contact solution - water. Not the best; makes it really hard to put the damn thing back in!)

What next?

So, I’ve already spent 2 out of the last 5 weeks sick with nasty, feverish colds, each of which caused me to miss 2 days of work. I was completely healthy for about 2 days - last Sunday and Monday. Then on Tuesday, I had some sort of eye infection. I just thought I’d scratched my eyeball with some dirt in my contacts, but it continued to be all red and icky for a couple of days - and THEN, last night, my throat started to hurt.

Turns out that one of the most common bacterial eye infection agents is strep. As in strep throat. Now, I used to get strep throat about 6 times a year as a child, but I’ve been blissfully strep-free since high school. But this morning, I woke up with what was clearly strep throat, and I’m blaming my untended eye infection (which has now healed on its own).

The good news is, a horribly sore throat is the only cold-like symptom. So at least I won’t be going through 4/5 boxes of kleenex like my last two bouts of Kleenex, or risk becoming addicted to Afrin.

The bad news is that I have a MOTHER of a fever. I’ve barely been able to keep it under 103 with judicious application of Tylenol and Advil. It’s the kind of fever where I can barely move (I actually needed Jeff to help me rip open a package of Saltines), and I switch back and forth from shivering to sweating like a pig. Oh, and let me not forget to mention the NAUSEA. So I’m starving, but it hurts like hell to swallow, and I’m afraid of throwing up anything I eat (I have lots of memories from my strep-ridden childhood of just how unpleasant vomiting through a strep-infected throat is).

After a call to a nurse friend of mine, I’ve opted for self-medication (we had a huge pile of antibiotic samples stashed under the sink; long story) rather than subjecting myself to a doctor’s visit, if I could even find someplace to go on a weekend. Of course, antibiotics have other fun side effects, so this could be a fun week for me. Did you know the typical duration of a strep infection is 5-7 days? And the antibiotics don’t do anything for the actual strep throat - they just keep it from spreading to your HEART OR KIDNEYS. Lovely.

Oh yes; and I have a business trip to Hawaii next Wed-Fri. Right in that 5-7 day zone, so here’s hoping…

At least I got sick over a weekend, so I only had to make it through today without Jeff. He’s here all weekend to pamper me; hopefully the fever will ease off in 48 hours or so. And, in a lucky twist of fate, the boat dive we were supposed to be on tomorrow got cancelled due to bad weather, so I haven’t wasted $200.

Ugh. I think I’m going to have to convert to a macrobiotic diet or something. 3 illnesses in less than 2 months is just OBSCENE.

Our weekend visit to South Carolina began as an attempt by Jeff and myself to save money by cashing in some frequent flier miles on a February visit, in lieu of the planned Christmas visit. Katie was also unable to make it out for Christmas, so she hopped on the February bandwagon as well, and somehow convinced her poor, unsuspecting boyfriend Joel to come along and meet the insane family. Then, my half-brother-in-law Mark (my, that’s a mouthful) decided to stop by for a few days after doing some work up in DC. So, we wound up with quite a crowd!

Weeks before the actual trip, we started getting near-daily phone calls from Mom. (Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m not making fun of you - it was cute, really!) Some questions she had for us included:

• Would it be ok if she had us sleep in a room other than my childhood bedroom, should it prove absolutely necessary due to the number of guests and configurations of beds?
• Did we prefer flannel or cotton sheets?
• What foods do we want on hand? (She actually sent out a rather detailed questionaire with sections for each meal, plus snacks, and sample options)
• Were we absolutely positive we wanted to visit? It wasn’t too late to cancel if we had better things to do.
• Were we sure we didn’t want to stay in a hotel, where we could get away from everyone and Jeff could live cat-hair-free?
• Did Cookie and Barrie mind driving down to Columbia to visit? Mom was more than happy to drive us up there instead.
• Et cetera…

We arrived at my house late Friday night, after Mom picked us up at the Charlotte airport (slightly more than an hours drive away from Columbia). I immediately became completely wired, zipping around the house looking at all the things I hadn’t seen in two years, frantically pursuing the two still-alive cats. There was also TONS OF FOOD. Possibly literally. Sitting out in the dining room was a table full of snacks (muffins, brownies, cheese straws, grapes, ginger snaps, to name a few), and Mom instantly offered us some corn chowder and creme caramel.

Poor Jeff was completely exhausted from several consecutive days of travel and trade shows, so I finally took pity on him and we hit the sack.

Saturday, we crawled out of bed around noon (but were still up before everyone except Daddy and Mark). There was a perpetual pot of coffee going in the kitchen (Daddy-style - that is, stronger than almost ANYONE makes coffee, except for Jeff). I think I had more coffee this past weekend than in the entire month leading up to it.

Katie and Joel actually took a few hours in the afternoon to go out somewhere and do something, but Jeff and I contented ourselves sitting around doing NOTHING. (Well, not entirely nothing: I spent large chunks of the day battling some problems on Katie’s laptop, before finally concluding that the hard disk was totally hosed.) We ate, chatted with my parents and Mark, ate some more, puttered around with our laptops, enjoyed a visit from Mom’s friend Kay, ate some more - etc. Good day!

Saturday night, we all had dinner and cake to celebrate Daddy’s 79th birthday (actually on Sunday, but by then Mark would be gone). Afterwards, we played one of my sister’s favorite games: “Eat Poo, You Cat.” (I have no idea if that’s the real name.) Everyone sits in a circle with a piece of paper and a pencil. At the top of your piece of paper, you write a sentence (”The weasel danced to hunt the rabbit,” and “It is 10:20 at night” were both examples). You then pass your paper to the person next to you, who has to draw a representation of your sentence beneath it. Then the part of the paper with the original sentence on it is folded over out of sight, and the paper is passed to the next person, who writes down a sentence that describes the picture… and so on, all the way around the circle.

You’re especially screwed if you’re sitting next to my dad, who Jeff jokingly refered to as “Picasso,” more for his surrealistic tendencies than his artistic talent! For instance, Daddy took a picture of a cat being kicked through a doorway, and translated it as “Get out of here, and don’t come back,” which the next person found understandably difficult to draw. I’d have half a dozen other bizarre examples, if we hadn’t accidentally thrown away the sheets when we were done. :(

Daddy’s actual birthday was a bit more eventful. Mark was taking off late in the morning, so we spent 30 minutes or so taking pictures outside. Anyone reading this who has a family is probably familiar with how this went:

“Ok, now I want a picture with just the ‘kids’ - Mark, that means you, too! Now one with the men. Now one with the boyfriends/husbands. Ooh, we need a sister pic. Now all of us together! Shoot - did we get one with Joel?”

After PhotoPalooza, Cookie and Barrie drove down from Rock Hill to hang out for a while. We set off in search of Frank’s, a famous hold hot dog place in Five Points (Cookie and Barrie are trying to visit lots of famous old diners/hot dog stands, and this was the closest one on the list). After about 10 minutes spent cruising up and down Harden St, and with several fruitless calls home to talk to my dad (who claimed to have some vague idea of where Frank’s was located, but wasn’t really sure that’s what it was called), we finally gave up and had lunch at Yesterday’s instead.

After several more hours of Doing Nothing (but now with Cookie and Barrie to entertain us), we packed some clothes and drove up to Rock Hill to stay with them overnight. First, we swung by Olive Garden for dinner. Jeff and I ordered glasses of wine, as we always do when eating Italian food. The waitress started to nod, and then looked surprised and told us “Oh no, I forgot, it’s Sunday.”

That’s right, folks: no alcohol is served on Sunday in South Carolina. (Well, not unless you shell out for a fairly expensive liquor license, which Olive Garden apparently opted to skip.) There’s something extremely surreal to me about eating Italian food, about being SURROUNDED by people eating Italian food, and not seeing a single glass of wine on any tables. Pasta and coke - not the same.

After swinging by Target (to pick up Miami Vice DVDs for Barrie and Jeff - I am SO being punished for subjecting him to Gilmore Girls) and Dunkin Donuts (for dessert), we headed to Casa Clark to see all the latest home improvements. Every time I visit, Barrie and Cookie have done something amazing to the place (granted, it’s usually years in between visits, so they have plenty of time to do stuff). This time, almost every room in the place had been repainted, and none of them were boring. Barrie had expanded on the wiring, so that you could bring up the video from a front-porch camera on the tv screen to see who’s ringing the doorbell. Jeff instantly started playing with the light dimmers and remote controls, as he always does, while Cookie and I zoned out in front of her fish tank and fish-watched for a bit.

The next morning, all of us geeks ganged up on Jeff and made him watch an episode of SeaQuest. (The one with the fish poo, if any of you were fans - and by the way, Barrie has one of the actual fish poo props in the Geek Room, and has fixed it so that it even lights up now!) Speaking of the Geek Room, we should have taken more pictures - but here’s one angle on it. You can see several framed SeaQuest uniforms (incidentally, Cookie and Barrie actually MET through an online SeaQuest role playing game), and one piece of the new built-in shelves that are home to all his unwrapped dolls. I’m sorry, “action figures.” :) There’s also a velociraptor claw on the table beneath the left-hand uniform, from Jurassic Park 2, I believe. I love the Geek Room!

Mom picked us up in the afternoon, and we headed home again to do more nothing. I made Mom watch Gilmore Girls while Jeff hid upstairs doing work.

In the evening, Daddy randomly got chatty. He’s quite a character; if you ask him outright to tell you about some part of his life (like, oh, say, WORLD WAR TWO, or living in Liberia, or starting to date his secretary - that would be Mom - while being married with five kids), he’ll wave you off and say he’s got nothing to tell. But if you wait long enough and don’t actually ASK, all sorts of stories can just start pouring out! For some reason, on this particular night, he was especially chatty about his, er, love life as a younger man. I love that my father is comfortable enough to tell me some of these things, but I think I may need to draw the line when he starts to get into details about my MOM….

I hope someone can convince him to write some of this stuff down one day (with some judicious editing, I hope). I always learn something new when he gets in a chatty mood. The G-rated parts of the stories concerning my parents are especially adorable. Daddy told me about how he started seeing Mom in a purely platonic way, shortly before a trip out of the country. She drove him to the airport, and apparently he couldn’t get her out of his mind on the whole trip. He claims to have even written poetry while on the flight! Mom and I gushed back and forth quite a bit about how lucky we’ve been to find a couple of terrific men. :)

I really enjoy visiting home - although it may well have something to do with the fact that I do it quite rarely! Mom is a blast to hang out with; just as goofy and gossipy as me. Daddy constantly cracks me up, and I love that Jeff has gotten comfortable enough around him (quite a feat, as you know if you’ve met my dad) to tease and joke with him. I actually get to see Katie every now and then out here in California, so I didn’t make as much of an effort to spend time with her as I probably could have on this trip. I was glad to have the chance to meet Joel again, though; he’s a little like Jeff in that he’s pretty shy and quiet when he first meets someone, so I haven’t really gotten to know him yet. And Cookie and Barrie - well, it’s one of the great injustices of the universe that the Clarks and the Laitys have wound up living 3000 miles apart! Cookie and I always fall right back in step with each other when we visit, as if it hasn’t been two years or more since we hung out; of all my high school friends, Cookie’s definitely the one I miss the most!

Before my last “I’m sick” entry could even scroll off the front page of this blog, I’ve been hit again with whatever mutant virus has been making the rounds. I kind of suspected this would happen. Shortly after I was sick the last time, almost EVERYONE I knew became sick as well, most with slightly different symptoms. Almost every single person in my office has taken at least two sick days in the last month; Jeff is complaining that people in his office are sick as well (he can tell because apparently one of his co-workers sprays Laysol whenever anyone else is sick). Ben and Kathy and Jen were all sick; even my therapist cancelled our appointment due to a spat with bronchitis. I figured with this many people dropping like flies all around me, it was just a matter of time until I caught another bug.

At least I’m getting good at spotting the warning signs. When I woke up yesterday morning with that sort-of thirsty feeling sore throat, I basically went ahead and wrote off Thursday and Friday in my mind as sick days, and got as much done at work yesterday as I could!

So, here I am, home sick for one (possibly two) days. I thought I’d share with you a day in the life of the Laitys when one of them (almost always me) is sick.

Of course, Jeff still has to go to work, and so can’t be here to cater to my every ailing whim. So, on his way home yesterday, he had to stock up on sick supplies for me: Gatorade (for when I get tired of the taste of water), Afrin nasal spray, etc. By this afternoon I was already running low on tissues, and had developed a massive craving for hot chocolate, so he kindly offered to go shopping again before he swung by McDonald’s to pick up dinner (sick-Anna comfort food).

I can only imagine what it looks like to him when he walks in the front door on a sick-Anna day. Firs, if I had the energy to do anything resembling cooking during the day, there are unwashed dishes and pots scattered across the kitchen counters, sink, dining table, and/or coffee table. (Today it’s not too bad, because I just reheated some leftovers.) But the really scary part is the area between the couch and the television. The coffee table and surrounding carpet will be covered with empty glasses (which used to contain milk, Gatorade, or water); zone bar wrappers if I got snacky; two or three kleenex boxes in various states of emptiness; and DOZENS if not HUNDREDS of used kleenex, wadded up into balls that don’t quite 100% contain their, er, contents. This is on TOP of the small wastebasket next to the couch, which is usually already completely full of used tissues, and therefore useless to me until someone (whose name begins with a J) takes out the trash.

I’m almost always wearing what Jeff refers to as my teddy-bear pants, and what I call my “sick pants.” They’re these brown fuzzy sweatpant-like things, with the texture of a teddy bear, that Mom got me 8 or 9 years ago. They’re a bit too big for me now, but that’s comfy when you’re sick. And they’re fuzzy, which is also comfy. And they’re brown, so it’s hard to tell that they’re dirty after I’ve been wearing them for 5 or 6 consecutive days of being sick.

At least today I showered. I usually don’t get around to it until 3 or 4 in the afternoon when I’m sick, so my hair is often wet when Jeff gets home (today I blew it dry; how exhausting!)

Also today, I had my new buddy, Mr. Laptop, to keep me company. I set it up on the armrest of the couch, with the power cord stretching out across the doorway to the bedroom. I didn’t actually spend that much time on it, but it was nice not having to get up off the couch and migrate to the office if I wanted to chat with someone on ICQ or check my email. (Although I had to get up plenty for other reasons, what with the obscene amount of fluids I’ve been chugging.) Also, there’s no television in front of my other computer, but here in the living room, I can be near my computer AND watch tv!

Watching tv - that’s all I did all day. Sometimes when I’m sick, I take naps or read to break the television monotony, but today it never got old. Technically, I guess I wasn’t watching tv - I was watching dvds. What dvds do I own that wouldn’t get old after 10 straight hours?

Jeff, who must really really love me, bought me Season One of Gilmore Girls on dvd last Sunday. I’m more than halfway through them already. If I wasn’t already married, I would want to marry Scott Patterson. Or even, possibly, Lauren Graham. They’re both pretty cute.

(Note: Jeff is now sitting beside me on the couch. He has torn me away from Gilmore Girls long enough for dinner and some West Wing, and he just fed me a chocolate truffle that he picked up at Trader Joes. TJ’s truffles are the best when you have a sore throat; they’re SOOOO soothing!)

It sucks that I’m actually SICK, otherwise this would have been an extremely pleasant day. :)