I don't know if you all know this or not but I grew up on a farm. And that farm at one time when I was just a wee idgit was a pig farm. I also don't know if you know that baby pigs are really really cute. But then they grow up and grow hair in weird spots, their teeth get all big and yellow and they get ugly and kind of scary. (Kind of like some old ladies I know.) I have a few fond memories of life on a swine farm even though I was still in elementary school when my dad realized pork bellies weren't the future and sold the pigs and became a small implement and tractor dealer right before the bottom fell out for the American farmer in the mid-80s. (The lack of great business sense is slightly genetic along with a terrible sense of timing.)
I remember my sisters and I taking the newborn piglets out of the farrowing house and playing with them on the lawn. I also remember taking buckets of kitchen scraps out to the pig lot behind the house and standing on the middle rail of the fence and hollering (because one can only HOLLER at a pig, calling and yelling don't cut it on the farm.) "Heeeeeerrrrrre PigpigpigpiiiiiiIIIIIIIIGGGG!" and all the sows and boars would come running for their daily treat of potato peels and egg shells. And who can forget the scene in Wizard of Oz where Dorothy almost falls into the pig pens and is rescued by the farm hands who later appear as her friends the scarecrow and the lion and my Dad telling us how dangerous hungry pigs can be. They will eat you if giving the chance! (This was later confirmed by an episode of CSI so I know it is true.)
This past week I was almost eaten alive by a pig. This little piggy was called H1N1 and it is a nasty shit. Sarah came home on the Wednesday before Halloween not feeling well. By bedtime she had a fever nearing 102 degrees with body aches and chills. I nursed her through Thursday and Friday. Saturday morning she thought she was pretty much over it (She got the one series of Tamiflu we were able to score from the 24 hour clinic. Sacrifices I make for my children.) I of course had been denying the aches, sore throat and slight chills I'd been experiencing since late Friday. By Saturday afternoon there was no ignoring the 102 degrees I was now sporting as a fine Halloween costume fashionably accessorized with the feeling of a troop of elephants sitting on my chest. Sometime Sunday I fell asleep in a fevered fog and awoke with memories of a weird dream where I was hanging out with John Mellencamp and then discovered that he wore a hairpiece and looked just like James Carville when he removed it. Stephen King was also hanging out with us but I don't remember his contribution to the dream. Dreaming of James Carville is scary enough!
I know I've mentioned before how much I love Halloween. Seriously I'd rather be sick and miss Christmas than miss out on Halloween (sorry Mom.) This year we were actually even invited to a real, genuine party with grown ups and costume contests and everything. (It was with theater people so it was a double whammy of theater and gay Halloween, win-win for sure!) I had to call (actually I texted because I couldn't talk at that point) the host and rescind our RSVP. Steve and I had a couple costume that was sure to win an award too. (Miley and Billy Ray complete with mullet, soul-patch and stripper pole.) Instead he sat outside by a fire pit and handed out candy to our ONE! family of trick-or-treaters and Sarah and I sat inside and died on the couch without even enough holiday spirit to watch stupid live Ghost Hunter shows. It was a sad night indeed.
It is now a full 10 days since my first symptoms and I can almost call myself human again. I'm still scaring small children (and adults and dogs) with my horrendous cough. Honestly the cough is worse than the bite. It alternates between that damn tickly cough that there just is no known remedy for known to humnakind. I seriously resulted to taking a Vicodin and going to bed in an unconscious stupor one night last week because I just couldn't take the farking tickle anymore. The other cough variety is the tight, dry, feels-like-wadded-up-newprint-in-my-chest cough. No matter how hard you cough and what weird contortions you put your body into, nothing comes up and there is no relief to the feeling of suffocation. I'm taking the Anti-Green-Phlegm-People drugs now by the bucket full and hoping that will evict it once and for all.
When I'm not trying to remove my larynx the hard way I'm feeling pretty good. Saturday we had gorgeous weather and I finally got the windows on the first floor washed and the storms installed properly for the winter. I also ushered at the theater Saturday night. (Note: ushering when you have a awful cough caused by an uncontrollable tickle in a county where people are FREAKING OUT! over the Swine Flu? Not a good idea.) There was also a party for two of my theater friends' birthdays that almost made up for missing Halloween. I've also started working with a new trainer at the gym. I'm committing to two days with her a week. I'm going to really kick ass when I can actually breath again!
But the first thing I'm going to do when I get my full voice and breath back is to go out back and holler, HERE PIG-PIG-PiiiiiiIIIIIIIIggggggGGGGG! as loud as I can and when it comes waddling up expecting potato peels and eggshells I'll kick it in the head and laugh while it goes Wee Wee Wee all the way back to the CDC.
(Maybe my fever-induced hallucinations aren't quite over after all...)
