Exactly  one week ago today, I felt a strange tickle in the back of my throat, a little irritation at the rear end of my nasal passages.

The next day, what could possible be either a head cold or a chest cold. I slept okay that night, and then all hell broke loose. I woke up Tuesday with both a head cold (congestion, sneezing, sniffling) and a chest cold (phlegm, mucus, coughing and heaving) and I woke up on Wednesday with conjunctivitis in both eyes. That has been my life ever since: coughing and hacking my way through the night with very little sleep, sweating to the point of drenching my bedsheets when I do finally fall asleep, waking up with my eyes gummed together like an inbred barn cat, and coughing up things that would make even Cthuhlu nudge away from from me.

My life has been reduced to eating, taking drugs, and sleeping (or trying to). It’s a lot like college, actually, only a lot less fun. I can’t taste anything that isn’t spicy, and since I don’t feel like cooking (lest I infect the entire kitchen), I’ve been surviving off frozen burritoes and canned soup. Fun. Even more fun since the entire week was overcast and drizzly, and downright depressing.

On one of my food and drug runs, however, I jogged through the produce section, and noticed that garlic was on sale at 4 heads for a dollar, so I picked up eight heads. Today dawned bright and sunny, though windy, so I broke apart a couple of heads and went out to the garden to plant them.

I pulled the worst weeds: dandelions, evening primrose, and a few others with deep taproots. I attacked the soil with a trowel, turning it over and breaking it up in just a few minutes, even though the bed had been neglected most of the summer and autumn. In less than fifteen minutes, I had it smoothed over and had planted roughly thirty cloves of garlic. I could feel the sun on my back even through the thick jacket I was wearing, and realized that this time spent in the sun was probably doing me more good than all the medicine I had taken over the last week. We shall see.

Once inside, I rested a bit, and then made some garlic soup. (Recipe to follow.) I did a bit of research on that one, but ended just cobbling together a recipe which turned out pretty good. Hopefully, between the sunshine, fresh air, and garlic soup, I can put this misery behind me, and get on to more important things: National Novel Writing Month, which starts today. Happy, happy, happy.

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