The Flu or How I Lost a Week And A Half But Gained A Yard of Flowers

I think that the flu is one of those things we're all expected to get through.

That is to say, it is more like the closest thing to death that we'll get through and everyone will just shrug and go on.

Having a cold, you seem to think "Hmm, I feel off" and you muddle through.

The Flu?  Each time I have had it, and I can only think of three times, it has been the same.

10:24AM - Yay, feel great, lets go do stuff!
10:25AM - Hmm, This isn't quite right.
10:26AM - A cold?  Is this a cold?
10:27AM - I had better check the fridge, are there enough supplies, this isn't normal.

It always is a Fast Onset like that.  Bang, you're down. 

The last two times I had it it I thought, Ok, well it's going to be four days of down, plus a few days of the wobblies, but no worries.

Hah.  Just Hah.

That particular morning, I had a memorial service I wanted to go to.  A good friend had died and I was told about a month before that there would be a get together and I was specifically invited.   He knew that he wasn't going to make it and wanted to make certain that I could get there and visit with family and friends.

Sorry, Emilio, but someone somewhere decided that I was going to have the flu that particular day.

I say it that way because it was a friend of a friend who went to work with the flu and inoculated her entire office.  I am collateral damage.

Being one of those people who never can just sit down and be sick, I got started on some projects.  Things that I knew I wanted to do but didn't want to do until I was in the right frame of mind.  I had some sewing that needed doing because I went past the Stitch In Time and it needed about 100 stitches.  I had a laptop that had to be completely disassembled and put back together.

Laptops are usually one of those "Clear The Deck" things.  You never want to do that in a rush.  This one took me through lunch time and it worked.  In fact, the original owner, happy with having the data recovered, told me to keep the machine.

Oh no, please take it, I don't need another machine, please, oh please.

It's still here.  Along with another one.

Oh well.

Day two was full on Flu.  We laid in supplies and thought that it would be a total of another four days.  Blown weekend and all.

And then it hit like a tornado.  Around day five I realized that I was scheduling a trip out back to the yard.  As in "I have to walk the 30 feet to the back of the yard to pour a half cup of water into some bamboo I am trying to clone, will I make it" schedule.

I made it.  That day was day four.  It was not fun. 

There are things that the world would expect you to keep doing.  If you look at tasks that you do, you realize that you have them on a schedule.  Every single day like OCD. 

Mine is Spanish. 

I log into a website called duolingo.com and practice with some basic Spanish quizzes.  I set my goal very low so that all I had to do was one quiz in case I got tied up.  See, I was thinking.  Be able to do it in case I got busy and was traveling.

Good thing that I did that.

I had been doing 30 questions a day for a very long time.  Duolingo has a graph on it.  When you hit a point where you skip, the graph dips.

Duolingo told me when the depth of the Flu was.  It was mid week, day 6 of a four day flu.  It took me all morning to get one quiz done.  It usually takes me about 10 minutes for all three.  By the end of the day when I passed out shivering in the cold, I had only completed two quizzes. 

I think that day, my bamboo didn't get watered either.  In the stand of bamboo out back that is about 10 feet across, about 5 feet off the ground there are two plastic bags tied to the stalk.  In the bags is a small handful of soil that I was keeping moist.

Luckily on Day 7, the soil was still slightly moist. 

I walked out back, watered it, walked back in.

By Day 8 the coughing started.  I walked out to the bamboo, and the dog followed me.  I thought to myself, "How did Rack get walked last week".

I still don't know.

Coming back to the house, I noticed that there were orchids blooming that hadn't bloomed before.  The Milkweed was in flower.  The Mango tree on the corner was in full flower.  My podocarpus cuttings were either dying or rooting, depending on the Gods of the Garden.

I had very little idea what caused it all.  Things just "happen" in a garden, whether you want them to or not.  Blink and it all goes wild.  I had had carrots, onions, green onions, and a rogue rutabaga planted back there.  It's all under a layer of clover now.  Have to find that stuff, quick.

Long past a blink, this was an 8 day black out.

Spanish on Day 9 was all about medical terminology.  Enfermedad - sickness.   Muerte - death. 

I was finally coming out of it enough to enjoy the irony.   The little laptop was telling me "Estoy amando tus labios" and I was thinking it was creepy that the machine that I breathed life back into was saying "I am loving your lips".

You know you are finally coming back when you are thinking of all of the times when some fool said that Flu Shots don't work.  Funny thing about that, I don't remember getting one this year.  I will remember the flu.

And those lips that my laptop seems to like.