Weights and Measures

Lord have mercy, did a cold ever descend like a glacial waterfall over my body yesterday!

Have you ever lived where the weather occassionally whips up a Blue Northern? A blue-black wall of sky moves across the horizon plunging temperatures by decades instead of degrees. You can stand in one spot and feel it hit with its incongruously inevitable suddenness. When I was a younger woman, I thought my father (a Native Texan) had made up Blue Northerns. He is a teller of tall tales after all. Why should I believe his stories of how sudden and how cold? Then one day during my freshman year of college (in Texas), I walked to class wearing shorts and saw that blue-black sky. An hour later, I emerged from class and sprinted to the dorm for warm pants and a sweater.

This is how the cold hit yesterday. Like a mixed metaphor? Probably. Waterfall, Blue Northern. Pick one. It hit. It descended. It moved swiftly, inevitably, and with purpose. In the morning, I felt fine. I went places and saw people. Somewhere during the 20 minute journey home, I felt a tickling in the throat. I drank hot tea and figured to knock it out before it took hold. Within a few hours, I was laid out in bed feeling as if someone had moved the house on top of me with a vague wish that someone had. I emerged a while later and slid a foreign language film into the DVD player of my laptop. Who needs English with a head full of wool? It turned out to be a perversely satisfying experience (the film + brain malfunctioning sickness). Of course, it didn't last long. I was out again in short order.

Is there a moral to this tale? A lesson? No. I feel crummy and tired. That's about it.