"Hold on." puts hand over phone "COUGH HACK HACK COUGH SNIFFLE SNORT HACK" blows nose, unmuffles phone "Excuse me, I am really sorry about that."
That is approximately what the last week has sounded like. You'll excuse me for not hacking and coughing into the computer for you sooner. It's really very disgusting. "Please don't shake my hand. I just coughed on it."
A coworker, the one lonely employee in my department (I have to manage someone to be a manager, right?), looked generally scared out of her mind on Friday when she came to my door to discover me bright red, sweating and sort-of heaving while trying to hold my breath so as not to interrupt the partner on the other end of the telephone with a REALLY MAJOR coughing fit.
Attempting to add a pantomime indicating that I'm fine but if I try to take a breath in, I'm liable to deafen the poor man while also being so gross that they'd have to fire me on principle really just seemed to make her look more worried.
I've been putting people on hold to run to the water cooler as if a drink is going to stop a fit. You should see the people in the hallway as I convulse in a spasm while trying to fill my cup... even Steady periodically looks over at me like "Are you dying? Is this just your normal coughing? Can you breath? Should I be doing something to help you?" and he's been listening to this all week.
I am seriously considering seeing a doctor about this. Meanwhile, the cough is getting less wet sounding by the day. And I haven't broken any ribs yet.
So, the Mesa (the very large I'm gonna call it a suburb but I guess really it's a city just east of here) SWAT team has decided that they need a helper monkey. It will cost $100,000 and apparently they found a grant for this?
Our favorite part of this story is the tiny kevlar vest they are going to make the monkey wear. I wish y'all could have heard my boyfriend reacting to this... I think his favorite part was the two-way radio... because, you know, monkeys don't talk.
"Well, you see, they've got helper monkeys and police dogs. So, someone hit upon the excellent idea of a police monkey."
"There's a great comic book in here somewhere."
Truelove plans on learning how to train the monkey himself and keeping the sociable monkey at home, just like a K-9 officer would. He projects that $85,000 in grant money would outfit the monkey with gear and pay for veterinarian care, food and habitat for three years.
The monkey gets benefits, y'all.
So, Steady and I have a new thing going on around here. Beginning tomorrow, we are going to attempt to eat according to the governments new food plan. Including the hour of excersize. Every single day. We'll be swimming since we both have bum feet.
Before anyone freaks out about mary ann being on a diet, preliminary calculations indicate that I will be eating substantially more.
Steady is making a database for this. There will be weighing and measuring of us and our food. Seriously, between my compulsive nature and his competitive one, and also the fact that there's a database being constructed for us to play with, I really do think that this will work quite well for us.
You wanna hear the funniest part of this plan? The excersize? That facet of our lives that's about to move from approximately, well, uh, it's pretty much been limited to walking to the store and having sex, and now it's gonna be an hour every day... yeah, that, is going to happen at six o'clock in the morning.
Don't laugh at me. We might make this happen. My alarm clock is really annoying to other people, the ones that actually hear it...
Edited 8:15 am to add Steady woke up this morning. Then he checked the weather. The first thing I knew, the blankets were being removed and I was waking up at six am to be told that, actually, you know, it's sixty-five degrees outside and there's no way he is going swimming in that kind of cold.
I did not take this well. Possibly I yelled a little. There may have been some guilt attempted. I did inquire as to why I had been awakened to be told that the plans to wake up were cancelled. I'm pretty sure that I informed him that 65* would have been a joy back when I was on the swim team.
I apologized once I woke up a bit and actually left the bed.
So, as a lifelong Phoenix metro area resident, except for those four years he spent going to college in New England, my boyfriend is not getting in the pool first thing in the morning if it's a bit chilly out. We will be swimming in the evening. Possibly this is the best thing for my cold, but don't tell him I told you that.
And the only other bit of news is that Steady is starting a new job tomorrow morning. And the next time I write, I promise not to be the girl who can't talk about anything without mentioning her boyfriend. Really.
The Fine Print:
2004: I return from Europe and my first trip to Phoenix.
2003: New job, in school, drinking myself blind nightly, generally too busy to update.
2002: This entry features a paperclip as an earring at work... which, actually, I lost another earring from that hole recently and I did consider that option when it happened. I opted not to.
