In case you didn’t notice I missed writing yesterday. First the excuse: I had an all-day meeting yesterday that bled into a work dinner. I didn’t arrive home until 8:30pm. Normally I still would have had time to pound out words. But with a resurgence of my head and chest cold and a massive headache, tinged with pathological yawning, you can begin to see my thought process last night.

I arrived home and Doolies was still in Naginata class. I took over Dinosaur duties from the babysitter and after feeding him, walked around the kitchen island for forty-five minutes waiting for Doolies to return home. There are two good straightaways during the island lap, and I managed to close my eyes as I walked them. I resisted handing Dinosaur directly to Doolies as she hates when I do that and last night he had not been terribly troublesome. I was just feeling crappy. When Doolies returned, I helped her shower Dinosaur, and after dropping him off in the bathroom bouncy, I had a tough decision: take Nyquil and go to sleep or write, and then Nyquil and then sleep.

I expect you understand my decision. I feel better today after proper dosing of the ‘quils. There was a lot of strange stares yesterday from colleagues wondering why the white-faced, scary cough guy came to work and didn’t stay home. Under a normal week I would have cleared my schedule and stayed home, but, as I said, this was a busy week at work and I didn’t have that option. My symptoms are now mostly under control and I feel almost human. While my nose is rubbed raw and my cough is still deeply wet, I again hope this is the tail end of the cold. I certainly hope it’s not the start of a new one. I’m not sure I could deal with that.

Okay, enough about sickness. I seem to be dwelling on this topic lately.

A colleague’s story that I thought I’d capture: A father of two boys wakes up in the morning expecting to hear loud noises from his boys’ room. The house is quiet. Not a good sign. He gets up and searches the house. He finds one of his boys downstairs staring out the window that overlooks the front yard. The boy is crying as he stares out the window. The father looks out and sees the two snowmen they built the previous day. The snowmen are melting. They named the snowmen after building them. The father forgets the names as he retells the story, but clearly his boy had not. The father regrets naming the snowmen, cursing himself for not thinking what would inevitably happen to the snowmen. The boy asks if they can find more snow and fix the snowmen. The colleague’s heart breaks as he explains that it’s grown too warm for the snowmen. The boy had probably been sitting there since sunrise watching the snowmen disappear. Other colleagues chime in that this was the perfect time to bring up the story of Frosty, who, with a magical hat, can be rebuilt and reanimated with any new snow. That sort of misses the point, of course.

As part of the work dinner we went to a cooking class last night where they taught us how to roll sushi. I like cooking and I really like sushi, but it’s not a dish that I’m interested in making. After watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, I have great respect for Sushi chefs (as I do for most chefs) but the level of expertise that I think is required to make good sushi—from the sourcing and selecting of the fish to the marinating and cutting, and even the rice cooking—is beyond what I’m willing to invest in my sub-hour meal preparation work. I prefer to go out to eat for my sushi.

The chefs at the cooking school did not specialize in sushi, as they told us before they started. I expect they chose sushi because there were 13 of us, and it would be difficult in the hour before dinner to cook a real meal in any meaningful way in the relatively small kitchen classroom. The sushi rice was too sweet but the fish was good. I stand by my decision not to roll sushi at home but I had a relatively good time.

This was my third cooking class. It was fun and definitely something I’d want to experience again. One of the attendees said that his alternative career choice was chef. He likely would have been successful in that career, as he is in his current career. I’m not sure my back or ego would have survived in the kitchen. Also my hands aren’t very steady and I don’t like pain or waking up early or monotonous chopping or smoke breaks or dirty kitchens. Scratch that, I would have been a terrible chef.

Tiger is off to bed. A bit later than usual because of my late arrival home. Dinosaur was falling asleep as I walked up and down the hallway watching Tiger preparing for bed. He’s now sleeping in his rocker. When he leans his head against my shoulder, it’s an indication that he’s ready to go down for a bit. His head was more than leaning as I walked down the stairs and he fell asleep before rocker completely it’s first full rock.

I’m still feeling better tonight than yesterday thanks to the massive dosage of ‘quils. I’ll probably take one more dose of Nyquil tonight. Tomorrow will be a busy morning as I have to rush Tiger through her morning routine to drop her off at day care before I head to work for an early morning meeting. I’m trying not to think about it as it’ll make me anxious. What I’ve learned about getting children ready is that it always takes longer than you expect. Even longer than waiting for certain wife-type people in the morning.

I don’t know what it is about me, but the thought of arriving late makes me anxious. I guess that serves me well in certain aspects of life, but it does make me an annoying person to be around when the anxiety hits. It’s another flaw that I recognize (but don’t necessary have a plan of action) in the NEQID.

The dogs are stinky. It’s time for another visit to the groomers. And with that stinky note, I’m off to watch anime and then prepare for the drugging.