I suggest you keep your distance, sir.

Grouchy.
I am grouchy.
I am sick as a dog. After a full week of doing everything right (ie drinking fluids, sleeping 89 hours a day, and drenching myself in Zicam/Nyquil/Vitamin C), I've surrendered to that fiend known as the Common Cold. She is a backstabbing beast of an illness...and she has taken me down for the count. Thus: grouchy.

I was very tolerant and optimistic the first few days of misery (largely because they were snow days that I could spend snuggled in my duvet), but now I'm just pissed at the world: for being cold, for having germs, for not stopping time when I don't feel well enough to function. That might be the most frustrating thing about being sick; people all around still expect you to think/talk/act normal, when all you want to do is curl up in the fetal position and whimper and eat oreos. Just now I had a student ask if we (we=Hot Librarians) have an industrial-strength stapler. I looked at her, fighting the instinct to feel very put out that she was bothering me, and said, "no, we don't." I couldn't even muster the strength to say "no, we don't...I'm sorry." Because I'm not sorry; go get your own damn stapler and leave me to wallow in my grouchiness.

(Come to find out we do have an industrial-strength stapler. I'm not only grouchy; I'm also a bad librarian.)

To top it off I find it nigh impossible to be funny when sick. Instead of coming off as a kidder I keep coming off as...well, as a psycho-bitch. Things that I say in jest keep falling flat, and I'm pretty sure I've hurt at least 3 people's feelings today. This morning I told a guy I blamed him for my sickness, because he was the last ill person I saw before my body began to sabotage me. And instead of laughing and saying something obnoxious back (which was the reaction I sought), he leaped into a drawn-out explanation as to why it couldn't be his fault. I just sat there, weighing the pros and cons of explaining my joke (pros: not look like a psycho-bitch, cons: expend precious energy and be lame (because explaining one's jokes is lame)). I eventually mumbled something about "no of course, it couldn't be your fault," and resigned myself to be being purposefully droll for the remainder of my illness so as to avoid awkward moments like that one. I then coughed unattractively and left his office with just a scoche less will to live than when I entered it...if there's one thing I hate more than being sick, it's being serious. And now I have to be both.

So for today, and for tomorrow, and for the near future in general (or until I break down and go to the doctor), I suggest you keep your distance from me. I go right, you go left, I go to Target, you go to Wal-Mart (spitspit)...it's better this way. Oh, and avoid eye contact with me if you can, because I'm pretty sure I'm just glowering at everybody these days. If you cannot stand to tear yourself from my presence, you must agree to take everything I say or do with a grain of salt - I will not be held accountable for my behavior when sick. It's bad enough I've lost this week in the prime of my life; I refuse to lose my dignity as well. For without my dignity, I am nothing...now look the other way, because I've got to spray Afrin up my nose.

Much love (and phlegm).