my body makes maple syrup!

I’m not dead. I’ve just been locked inside my house, sick. (And thus inable to get out back to the shed that houses my “blogging apparatus.”) This is by far the most tenacious cold I’ve ever had. It’s been two and a half weeks now. I went to the doctor yesterday, and he said that it had crossed over to an infection of some kind. Thursday morning, when I awoke, I couldn’t get my eyelids to separate. They were swollen closed and fused with something like maple syrup. (After wasting about ten minutes scrubbing at them with an old toothbrush, I set out to construct a makeshift waterboarding setup from an assortment of Clementine’s tub toys. Thank God for waterboarding. That’s all I have to say.) Around that same time, I made the decision that it wasn’t worth fighting it off any longer. If the cold wanted me that badly, it could have me. For two weeks I’d tried to coexist with it, and keep on doing everything that I normally would, but I’d had enough. I just decided to let the cold do what it had to do so that it could move on. So, I slept a few days straight, took some sick days from work, coughing violently and filling trash bag after trash bag with a veritable kaleidoscope of mucus. Yellow, red, green, brown. And I sweat like a motherfucker… So, now it’s Sunday evening and there’s an end in sight. I’ve somehow pulled a muscle in the part of my head that connects it to my neck, so it feels like I’m getting an ice pick to the brain every time I cough, but, otherwise, things are good. The higher spots on my face, which had become a constantly bubbling bog of phlegm, are now relatively dry. My handkerchief is no longer dripping blood. My eyes are clear. My hearing is back… And, so, I anticipate that my sixth sense (the blogging sense) will be back within a day or two as well. Just be patient, and enjoy the MM.com-less time with your families.

In one of my first post-sickness posts, I will be selecting another blogger to receive the clothes I have been wearing these past several weeks. If you have a suggestion as to who you would like to see them on, leave a note. Otherwise, just trust me. I think I’ve got a pretty good plan… The idea would be that these thoroughly infected clothes of mine would travel to another blogger, who would wear them for 48 hours. If he or she proves strong enough to fight off the illness, they’re then forwarded on to someone else, and the chain continues. If, however, the blogger becomes ill, the clothes are to remain on his or her carcass until the very end. They are never to be washed. In the instance of death, I will have the responsibility for choosing the next recipient. I will, of course, take into consideration the wishes of the deceased’s family.

And thanks to all of you who sent notes over the last week to check up on me. It was nice of you to have taken the time from your real lives to check in on my online one.

Just a few last thoughts… I do not like Burt Lancaster as an actor. The British television show, “The Prisoner,” is probably not best appreciated after being confined to your home for five days straight, thoroughly incapacitated by found cough medicine and homemade antibiotics. Thank god for the inexpensive oil and cheap migrant labor that brings 18-pound bags of grapefruit to Michigan for $5, and for Turner Classic Movies (the saving grace of basic cable). My Michigan Design Militia friends and I were featured in a very nice writeup in Metromode. My head, you will notice if you follow that link, appears to have been fashioned from a 25 lb. block of yellowish-grey lard. (It’s not the fault of photographer Myra Klarman, by the way, that I look like I do, so please don’t send her angry letters.) Oh, and here’s hoping that none of you ever have the experience of being dreadfully ill and peaking out your window to see another local blogger in front of your house, sneakily casting glances this way and that, trying, I assume, to suss out what’s the matter with you. On one hand, it’s nice that people care (assuming of course that he wasn’t just looking to make a move against my little empire), but on the other it’s kind of creepy. (And, for what it’s worth, after 6 hours of “The Prisoner,” it looked pretty f’n creepy.)

Its nice to see that life, however, has gone on without me.

Off to bed.

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17 Comments

  1. murph
    Posted March 25, 2007 at 10:45 pm | Permalink

    I would nominate Schutzman for the clothes, but I suspect he’s going to nominate himself, so I’ll come up with somebody else…

  2. egpenet
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 12:02 am | Permalink

    I thought you had run off with Ypsi-Dixit … she’s been quiet recently, too.

    Could’a been quite a scandal. Oh, well …

    Back to the ol’blog’o’grind.

  3. edweird
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 11:27 am | Permalink

    You must’ve had the same thing I had. I’m still a mucus generator and it’s going on two weeks. Get better, dude.

  4. dr. teddy glass
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 12:09 pm | Permalink

    I know it’s not really an option, but I vote for Murph in an damp wool tuberculosis-laden scarf.

  5. brian r
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 2:04 pm | Permalink

    Talk about your coincidences. I know this guy whose body makes French toast. I should give you his number so the two of you can have brunch some time.

  6. murph
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 6:57 pm | Permalink

    Urk. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to eat brunch again.

  7. mark
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 8:09 pm | Permalink

    I hesitate to take us further down this path, but there’s a chance that the stuff growing on my feet are mushrooms. I’ve been in contact with a rare mushroom dealer in Japan, who, after seeing photos, seems quite confident not only that they’re mushrooms, but that they’re delicious. So, I guess you can also put me down for some of those, if we get this “brunch of the body” off the ground. I’m thinking that they’d be nice suspended in toe nail gelatin.

  8. ol' e cross
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 9:22 pm | Permalink

    Oh. You’re not dead afterall.

    I guess I don’t get to move on with my life.

  9. srah
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 10:08 pm | Permalink

    NOT IT!

    *finger to nose*

  10. mark
    Posted March 26, 2007 at 10:51 pm | Permalink

    Hmmm…. If I split the bag of moist clothes up, I probably have enough that all my blogging friends could have a piece. It’s not as spectacular (shock and awe) as my original vision, but perhaps it’s more fair… A sock to Srah, and a sock to Murph. Those are my first two bequests.

  11. julesabu
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 8:43 am | Permalink

    Why do you not like Burt Lancaster as an actor? What did you see him in that made you make that comment? I’m just curious.

  12. srah
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 11:07 am | Permalink

    But I notited! Noted it?

  13. cleo love-paste
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 11:30 am | Permalink

    If you give me a few months, I have a placenta that’s almost ready for harvest.

  14. UBU
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 3:19 pm | Permalink

    You probably got it from touching all those lousy record jackets…

  15. It's Skinner Again
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 4:02 pm | Permalink

    It might be Mark’s diet of chips and canned cheese dip. At some point, the human body can take no more.

    And I assume Mark meant that he finds Burt Lancaster so much more appealing when he’s just being himself, rather than acting. I can see that.

  16. egpenet
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 8:20 pm | Permalink

    “From Here to Eternity” is a Burt classic.

  17. mark
    Posted March 27, 2007 at 9:35 pm | Permalink

    I was going to say that Burt Lancaster was the Ben Afleck of his day, but that wouldn’t have been quite right. It’s not that Lancaster was a terrible actor – he wasn’t. I just don’t enjoy watching him act. I watched a lot of old movies while I was sick, and it dawned on me, after watching three of his films back to back one day, that, while good at his craft, he didn’t really excite me the way Bogart, Cagney, and others of that generation did. It’s nothing personal.

    Skinner’s explanation is better though… So, let’s just say I liked him better as a circus acrobat. (For those of you who didn’t know, that’s how he got his start in show business. See how much you can learn from Turner Classic Movies?)

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