what hell probably feels like

Three.

This is the number of sick/personal days that my boss Vince allows each employee to have for the entire year. Which means, you can get sick once every four months....thus they must be allotted very carefully.

So when I woke up this morning with a sore throat, headache, stuffed nose, and a body that ached everywhere with the exception of my teeth, I considered using one of these golden sick days.

But my sick day philosophy discourages me from using sick days when I'm sick. I'd much rather use them when I'm healthy because then I can actually enjoy them. If I'm going to stay home and be miserable, I figure that I may as well go into work.

Besides, I thought, surely after a hot shower I'll be feeling better.

But I didn't. After the shower, as I wiped a hole of condensation off the mirror, I looked into the reflection of my pale, red-rimmed eyes, and realized that I still felt lousy.

Maybe once I get on the road and get some coffee in me I'll feel better, I thought.

But I didn't. As I sat in traffic, unable to breathe through my nose and suffering from frequent coughing fits that drowned out my radio, I realized that I still felt absolutely terrible.

I got to work and, with the understanding that I wasn't going to be feeling better anytime soon, sat down and tried to work.

But worked proved to be hard...especially considering that my head felt like that bulb at the bottom of a thermometer on a frigid day when all the mercury settles into it. I may very well be near death, I thought. But having dragged myself this far, I refused to give in.

Work came in intermittent spurts. A little bit was done in between bouts of sneezing. A little more was done in between bouts of coughing. And a little bit more was done even though my cement laden head, burning eyes, and sandpaper coated throat were all threatening to turn against me. But I prevailed for what seemed like hours in this condition.

I glanced at the clock through teary eyes to see how much longer I had until lunch.

It was only 8:15.

the lint in my life

I've always hated doing laundry. I hate washing clothes. I hate drying clothes. I hate ironing clothes. And if it were considered socially acceptable, I would never wash another garment and walk around in filthy, stinking attire for the rest of my clothes wearing days.

Unfortunately, I tend to enjoy human contact. Thus, I force myself to launder.

As a kid, the whole laundry process seemed quite fun...especially the drying portion. My mother would let me throw the sheet of fabric softener into the dryer which, at the time, I considered to be the most important aspect of the whole thing. And then she'd put me in charge of the Removal of the Lint...the thing that made laundry so intriguing.

I'd pull out the lint tray and carefully peel away that fuzzy concoction contained therein. And, unlike belly button lint or toe jam lint, the drying machine lint was perfectly clean...having just gone through the wash.

I'd marvel at the fluffy white mass in my hands, much like a miniature cumulus cloud which, depending on the amount of dark clothes that had been in the wash, had varying shades of gray...as if threatening rain was on the way.

Of course, I was only a kid and my attention span was limited. So the appeal of lint only lasted for a few seconds before I became bored with it, crumbled it into a ball, and tossed it into the trash. But for those few seconds, lint was possibly the coolest thing in the world.

And even now, removing lint is the highlight of my clothes washing chore...the only redeeming quality about the whole process.

Lately, though, I've been quite disappointed, because rather than the fluffy white/gray lint that I remember from my youth, the lint I get from my clothes nowadays is neither fluffy nor white. Rather, its quite flat and has a purple tint to it. Which is all the more confusing because I don't own any red or purple clothing.

Granted, I have one maroon bath towel, but this towel doesn't go through every wash cycle...and could one single towel taint the total lint production? I simply can't imagine that this one towel is solely to blame. So why is my lint lacking?

But each time I peel the lint off my lint tray, I'm left looking at a flat, purpley looking mess. It's not billowous or cottony at all...which I always thought was the natural state of lint.

I've always hated doing laundry. And now it's become even more unbearable, because even the lint isn't as exciting as it used to be.

the music is making me fat

I decided that this 'healthy living' thing was long overdue. Lately, it seems that my gelatinous body complains about even the smallest amount of physical activity.

Some time on the tread mill, I reasoned, would reduce the huffing and puffing that occurs when I simply walk from the kitchen to the couch. Besides, my rent includes access to a gym...so it wasn't like this desire to improve my health would cost me anything. Because if there's one thing I'm frugal about, it's spending money to improve my health. Money should be spent on more important things like wide-screen televisions and ipods.

Having been so long absent from any type of exercise institution, I wasn't sure what the current fashion trends were, so I grabbed what I hoped would pass for appropriate gym attire...a ratty old t-shirt and shorts...and headed off.

I entered the gym and wandered over to the treadmills, ready to get myself into shape. I mentally pumped myself up on the car ride over, just in case my mind revolted and forced me to turn into the nearest fast food restaurant rather than submit itself to actual exercise.

I stepped onto the treadmill and started off at a slow jog, when the sound of the overhead speakers entered into my consciousness. The radio station that was being piped throughout the gym happened to be a local soft rock station...not one of my particular favorites, but nothing that I had any serious objections to...until I recognized what song was being played.

As I was jogging away, Celine Dion was singing the theme song to the film Titanic. And I quickly realized that a ballad professing endless love was not the best musical selection to encourage physical exertion. I felt like I was running in slow motion...my feet wanting to keep pace to the music rather than the pace of the belt moving swiftly beneath me. I fought through the pain however...which is what us true exercise enthusiasts do.

As Celine finished her song and another slow, saccharine dripping love song began, my brain began to win the 'stop jogging' argument.

'How can you possibly jog to all this soft rock?' it asked me...and I use the third person here because my brain was clearly acting of its own accord. 'It simply doesn't seem like real exercise when you're running with love songs playing in the background.'

My brain had a point, so I stopped jogging. To my benefit, though, I put in a whole .07 miles.

I decided to hit the weights instead. But when an Air Supply song started playing, I found that I just couldn't muster the strength to lift anything. Soft rock and pumping iron are diametrically opposed, I realized. Perhaps, had Einstein lived long enough, he would have come up with a mathematical equation to prove this...but even in the absence of hard evidence, I felt positive that this was one of those universal truths.

I gave up and left. My brain, having won the argument, forced me to turn into a McDonald's restaurant...to the victor goes the spoils.

Oddly enough, the same soft rock station that had been playing in the gym was also playing at McDonald's. And as I sat in front of my Big Mac and fries, I realized that while soft rock isn't conducive to exercise, it goes quite well with eating.

not even close

Traffic was at a standstill this afternoon, and I was stuck in the middle of an endless sea of gleaming brake lights. Inwardly groaning, and flipping incessantly from radio station to radio station as if the dial could somehow magically accelerate the cars in front of me, I sadly had to conclude that I wouldn't be plopping myself down on the couch anytime in the near future.

I sat back in the driver's seat, frustrated but resigned to this fact...hoping that there would at least be a payoff several miles up the road. This isn't to say that I'm cold-hearted, however. I care just as much for humanity as the next person, and rarely do I take pleasure in other folk's misfortune...but when stuck in apocalyptic traffic such as this, I want to see that a spectacular wreck was the root cause of it all.

Not necessarily a death and dismemberment type of wreck...but a multiple vehicle, twisted metal one with lots of flashing police and ambulance lights suffices nicely. At least this way, all the waiting can be justified and a quick glance at mayhem that isn't mine, and, for me, this tends to be payment enough for having just been parked on the parkway for hours.

But when traffic is stopped for no apparent reason, this is when I become incensed and outraged...at the public transportation department, the original city planners (who felt that two lanes in each direction would suffice for years to come), and at the road itself (why the hell couldn't it aspire to be just a little bit wider!)

As I sat, I began to wonder when those Jetson-esque flying cars would finally be invented. I've never bought a new car right off the lot, but a Jetson car would surely be worth the price, I figured. With one of those babies, I could simply hover up above the ever-expanding row of traffic and glide myself home in mere minutes!

Of course, this theory only works if I'm the only one that actually owns a Jetson car. And the idea of inventing one crossed my mind, but the fact that I can barely make a grilled cheese sandwich let alone a hovering mass of glass and metal meant that my flying days were far in the future.

Still, the thought that I could escape the boredom of everyday life was intoxicating...to just leave the traffic far below and be free. Nothing would hold me back any longer. Wind whipping past me, I'd be able to leave gravity, bosses, deadlines, and worries behind. And for those few short minutes everything would seem possible...a better life just within my grasp.

But the cars surrounding me remained at a standstill and home was still miles away. And as I sat and stared out the window shield, I knew there was still a long way to go.

revived archives

Entry: June 14, 1977 from my ficticious diaries

My mom's hair always looks really pretty and it smells good too and I know it's because she uses this goopy looking stuff that's in her bathroom. It comes in all these different colors like yellow and green and she told me that it's called 'gel'. It looks sorta like Jell-O that she makes for snacks sometimes, so I bet that this is what she means.

Grown-ups probably just don't add the 'O' at the end of the 'jell' cause its only how kids say it.

So I was sittin' and watchin' TV later on when our dog Snick comes walkin' into the room. He smelled real stinky and his fur looked kinda like someone tied it all in little knots or somethin'. I figured that he probably wanted to look nicer, and if Jell-O can make my mom's hair look pretty, I figured that it could probably do the same for Snick.

So I take him in the kitchen and open the fridge cause my mom had made some Jell-O and I take out a big scoop with my hand and started rubbing it into Snick's fur just like I seen my mom do in front of the bathroom mirror when she uses it in her hair.

I rubbed and rubbed but Snick's fur didn't look any better even though he did smell a little bit like cherries. I was tryin' to figure out what I was doin' wrong, since my mom's hair always looks so pretty but Snick's wasn't getting' any better, but she walked in and gave a sort of small scream.

She took the Jell-O away from me and asked what I thought I was doin', but she didn't give me a chance to answer and said never to put Jell-O in Snick's fur again and told me to go up to my bedroom. So I guess that Jell-O only works for people hair.

But there's got to be something for pets. So tomorrow I'm gonna try peanut butter instead.