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Yearning for the good old days 3 weeks ago
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Take a deep breath. Did it make you cough? If not, count your blessings you are living in a land somewhere over the rainbow. - photo by Steve Eaton
I want to be as happy and carefree as the people on the evening news.

Im not referencing the people who are in the news, but the people who are in the commercials for different prescription drugs. Those are the people who take Zardorf (a drug name I made up) and who, as a result, can climb mountains, play with grandchildren and wear special diapers that give them freedom. They never feature the people who are adversely affected by the drugs, but they are required by law to talk about them really fast. Just sometimes people might suffer from blindness, inability to think, vomiting, melting ears, mad cow disease and loud hiccup syndrome. The rest of the people live in a happy land full of rolling meadows where its always summer and no one has to die.

I am yearning for health and the good old days now because I caught the flu this year and it wont go away. In this case, the good old days were just three weeks ago, before this all started.

Ive been in the grey zone for a week. The grey zone is where you feel guilty about staying home, so you go to work, but you dont really have the ability to function at normal capacity. Its like starting on a football team with two badly sprained ankles but being sworn to secrecy about why you suddenly run like an old man who has no access to Zardorf.

It makes me yearn for those summer days when I would drink a glass of wheatgrass juice, run to the top of Mt. Logan to watch the sun rise and then go to work, all the time breathing deeply without coughing. Never mind the fact that I havent seen the sun rise outdoors since I was a Boy Scout and that the one time I did drink wheatgrass juice, I spent two days trying to get the aftertaste out of my mouth with Cheetos.

Im just tired of being sick, and if I ever get better this time, I wont take breathing for granted. Ill work hard and long and clean all the day long with no complaining. Im so desperate, I may even take Zardorf and just put up with the melting-ears side effects.

Somewhere over the rainbow, the flu is gone.

Thats where every day is summer and no one knows I'm wearing an adult diaper.
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