White Lightning Axiom: Redux

A pox upon you, thine vile infiltrators! Ahhh, but alas, the pox is truly upon me. I can only beseech the little daemons to vex me no longer with their unending rivers of sputum and mucus and phlegm. Oh, deliver me from my torpidity and distill from my turgid veins, the life blood choked with detritus of dead invaders and defenders alike. I hate being sick. The fevers and night chills are the worst.

My parental units and the little-little brother came down to the frozen wastelands of Philly Friday evening. The fools have fallen into my trap! The next morning, we got a bit of snow. As the weather channel called it: "Winter Wallop". Some executives high school child must have come up with that one. Sheesh. Our family friend Pete has invited us out to the Sportsman show here in the Fort Washington Expo Center on this ominous Saturday morning. We arrived at 1000 and unloaded the 'Man Club'. The Ladies went on their own shopping expedition. I dread the impact that they will have on the local food-stuff reserves. While at the Expo, we found ourselves quite quickly surrounded by hundreds of taxidermy displays, fishing gear merchants and row upon row of boats and campers. The entire floor of the center was used for this pageant of the outdoors. They had indoor trout fishing and a mini-zoo too. I did not buy much of anything, as tempting as it was. There were NO guns to be found. Lots archery paraphernalia. There was even a child archery range and a BB shooting gallery. No conceivable display or activity went unrepresented. Jake found the Girl Scouts and flirted with them for a bit until Gramps bought a box of chocolate covered mint wafers. He enjoyed the first sleeve tremendously. That, and the bumble-bar nibblets ... and the stick of cajun alligator jerky I got for him. Hungry man, he was. The snow started coming down pretty hard around noon, so we packed it in and hit the road. This was quite enjoyable, we will probably do it again next year. By the time we got home, I started to feel that tell-tale tingle behind my eyes and the swimmy feeling in my tummy that told me a migraine was coming on. It masked the nasty little case of the flu that was settling into a defensive position against my weakened immune system.

Got up feeling a tad off on Sunday. Migraine just a little twinge, but manageable. We had a bit of work to do if we were going to make it to the 1000 family mass. The whole carport had to be cleared so we could get the family tank out onto the local roads. It took my Amish Dad and I a bit of time, but we managed to wrap it up by 0925. I was feeling the usual exhaustion from working in the cold as I got myself warmed up. You know it is cold out when you take a shower and the hot water raining down upon your face becomes ice water by the time it hits your chest. You also know it is cold out when the antiperspirant in the medicine cabinet that is installed in the outer wall is nearly frozen. Oh, the devil who thought up gel deodorant was cursed in spades that morning. Nothing quite gets you jumping like putting a copious smear of near-zero degree gel on your armpits after a hot shower.

At church, the parking lot of purgatory is nearly empty at 5 minutes of. Not entirely surprising. The attendance is so sparse that they do not have a mass in the lower chapel. The grace of God was upon us and the little ones were content to mutilate Grandma's glasses and eat all of her Altoids. Yetch, Jake the Punk must have eaten a half dozen of 'em. He emanated peppermint odor to a reach of one meter. Alexis, not to be out done, ate another jerky stick throughout the mass. Hmmm, I wonder if they would consider changing the holy sacrament from unleavened bread to elk jerky. Is that blasphemy? All throughout mass, the little sliver of a migraine grew in width and length until it was a solid spike of white-hot pain from my temple right through to the back of my skull. The nausea, loss of color vision (any colors), sensitivity to light and the dreaded loss of feeling in extremities pretty much floored me. I could not fall back on the Mrs either. She had managed to pick up the nasty little flu virus as well and was pretty much out of commission as well. I had to fall back on the Grandparents to fill in for us. I think they may have planned this. No, I am certain of it. Get the parents out of the way to have exclusive time with the grandkids. Yeahhh, I just have to figure out how they infected us. Musta been the French Toast. Never did trust then French.

The Mrs and I thrash about in our delirium for a few hours while the grandparents put the kids down for a nap. Apparently, Alexis the Squirt woke up later on and went outside to do a bit of sledding in the near-zero weather. She apparently was not too keen on the deeper snow, but enjoyed being pulled along the shoveled driveway. It was much too cold for her to stay out too long and I managed to catch her on the way back inside. She was bundled up so much she could barely waddle down the hallway. Looking at her from a distance one could mistake her for a largish red penguin. I'm still in rough shape and things don't get any better by the time dinner rolls around. Jake the Punk is on the skids too, but he turns a corner after eating some of Grandma's chicken in a pot. I do not. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. Maybe the Eagles will play the Steelers in the super-bowl. Perhaps not.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 11:10 PM