Swimming Through Oatmeal...

OK... the title should have been the clue as to how today started out. Anyone who has ever stirred a pot of regular, quick-cooking oats and watched it turn from liquid with flakes in it to a thick, gloppy mass should just imagine trying to swim through a pool of that stuff!

No... I was not a contestant in a bizarre game show or radio morning show stunt.

Nick has been battling a bad head cold all this week and when my head started to feel like a balloon late yesterday afternoon, I decided that I didn’t need yet another reason to be deprived of sleep. Before bed last night, I took a dose of Tylenol cold medicine- the nasty blue tasting slime with “ice minty freshness”. BLEEeeeeaaaaah! Then, someone hit me with a sledgehammer.

Not literally, but the effect was the same. I should have done the math when Nick told me that it made him groggy in the morning. We took the same adult dosage (as everyone does) but he outweighs me by about 100 lbs.! What made him a bit groggy almost drugged me senseless, so what would it do to a regular 5’4” female?

The next thing I knew, the alarm was beeping and I fell back into a deep sleep dreaming that I was in a hotel room trying to sleep and all kinds of people kept walking in and out of my room. My poor brain was probably trying to cope! Nick came back in and woke me so that I could get out of bed and eat something before driving him to work. I almost asked him to bring the van down at lunchtime instead. For the first time, the dire warnings about not operating heavy equipment or machinery while taking said product made a whole lot of sense!

Luckily, breakfast and a quick dose of caffeine allowed me to safely drive him the 6 km to work and back being VERY careful! I WALKED the kids up to the bus stop in the misty rain (telling them that they needed more exercise... not that Mommy was a bit to drugged out to drive them) and got them safely off to school, then stumbled home and crawled right back into bed to sleep this off.

Another 3 hours disappeared into limbo.

Now I am up and mostly functional, though it still feels like I am swimming through oatmeal. Every now and then we need to check out of the world and give our bodies a chance to rest instead of running at a crazy pace, but I don’t think I ever want to do it in a “minty freshness induced stupor” again. Ever!

Next time, I just honk and snot all over my keyboard and still get some work done!