You should totally go visit her right now.

Remembrance Day always makes me ruminative about the place of history in our current consciences, because it is one of the few holidays where we are explicitly told listen you have to remember this thing that happened ok and, one, people pay attention, two, there is nothing jamming the line like bbq’s or parties or football games or chocolate eggs or presents. History: You should give a shit, who knew.

Just so we are clear though, I don’t really care about Queen Victoria’s birthday either so go ahead and slam it back on May 24 weekend, fireworks and the whole bit. Honestly we should all get free corgis on Victoria Day.

All my joking about THE SWIMES~! aside, I do get kind of antsy when flu season comes ’round. I have a couple of reasons:

1) In October 1997, I caught the flu. It caused respiratory complications (always a risk, with my severe asthma), and I ended up with two collapsed lungs and almost died. Then, although I was 21 years old, I was put in the childrens’ ward at the hospital, where I stayed for two weeks with a giant, looming Grover on my wall (that part wasn’t so bad). I missed a week of school and a week of my practicum and had it not been for one of my profs yelling at the Dean (they liked me. They really liked me! Liked me enough to yell at people and risk their jobs – that was very cool), I would have been given an Incomplete and not allowed to graduate from my B.Ed the following year with the rest of my program because although I had 90s and above in all my classes, I had missed 5 days of a practicum and we were only allowed to miss 3.

2) In February, 2007, Rob got the flu. It caused gastrointestinal problems as well as respiratory complications. They had him on oxygen. He lost 12L of fluid in a six-hour period and his kidneys were beginning to fail. Because of the flu. He almost died, because of the flu.

Because of this, we have both been told that we should get the annual flu vaccine. And we do, for the most part. I’m sure there’s been a year here and there in the past 10 that I haven’t gotten it, but since it’s offered for free at my annual convention at the beginning of October, I usually do get it. It doesn’t necessarily stop me from getting the flu every year, but I haven’t had a repeat of the Horrible Collapsed Lungs of Death, so that’s a plus. I do, typically, still have a terrible time breathing, and have to take my puffers every 20 minutes, which isn’t pleasant. Rob has had the flu since his awful adventure, too, but nothing nearly as bad.

This year, however, because of H1N1 and the ensuing frenzy, the flu vaccines, both regular and Swine Flu, have been very difficult to get. They didn’t offer them at Convention – they said that as soon as the H1N1 vaccine was available, they would offer the regular flu shot at the same time. This was a month ago. So far, they have pushed back when schools were going to receive the vaccine about four times. Kindergarten and grade 1 students got theirs last week, but that’s been it. Ours were scheduled for yesterday, and then it was pushed back to Thursday, and now they’re saying maybe next week. I’m not holding my breath.

That’s why this was kind of timely. I was asked to review Complete Health’s Respiratory Guard supplements. They’re a lozenge which, taken twice daily, are supposed to help boost immune defenses. Each lozenge contains elderberry, which has been used for centuries by doctors to help with respiratory problems, as well as other ingredients.

Before I say anything, I must say this: I was asked to give my honest opinion about this product. I was not paid to give a positive review, and I will not be penalized in any way for giving a negative review.

Now that that’s out of the way:

When I received the package last week, I thought “Hey, it’s worth a shot”. I mean, I work in a place where people are sneezing and coughing on everything, and 90% of them aren’t all that prone to washing their hands. It’s basically a germ festival in there. Anything to boost my chances of survival, I say. So I’ve been taking the lozenges twice a day for the past five days (one box contains 14 lozenges).

Here are my thoughts: They taste alright. Not totally mediciney as I was expecting. Not something you’d want to have for every meal for the rest of your life, but it’s not unpleasant. I’ve never tasted elderberries before, but I imagine that this is what they taste like. The lozenges aren’t huge, either, so if you didn’t like the taste, well, they wouldn’t be in your mouth for that long.

As for the benefits? Well, as you know, I’m feeling under the weather right now. I don’t know if it’s the flu, or a cold, or exactly what it is. Pretty much feeling dizzy and nauseated, and having a hard time concentrating. Headache, body ache. Intermittent fever. Sleeping and sleeping and sleeping and wishing for still more sleep.

BUT.

Generally with any illness that I get, be it a cold, the flu, or heck, even an ear infection, my asthma ramps up. Instead of taking my puffers once or twice a week, I end up taking them three or four times a day, sometimes more. I occasionally end up in the ER getting IV steroids or a breathing treatment.

This time, I haven’t had to take my puffers at all. I have had no respiratory effects of whatever this illness is. That is absolutely unheard of, for me. I mean, I can have respiratory problems just from moving the sofa to the left. So this is a HUGE deal.

It could be just a coincidence (a very, very unlikely coincidence), or it could be the Respiratory Guard. Either way, I’m glad that it’s happening. I think having the lack of oxygen on top of everything else I’m feeling would make me extremely, extremely whiny. And nobody wants that.

It’s been windy around here. Hell, it’s always windy around here. I suppose it’s from living next to the ocean.

The wind always brings us very interesting things. Today, it brought an empty Molson Canadian box into our backyard. Having been laid low with The Swimes~! most of today, I hadn’t noticed it until I went to take Doozer out earlier. His immediate reaction was, predictably, “NEW THING IN THE YARD! I’ll PEE ON THAT!” Of course I didn’t touch it (are you kidding? There was dog pee on it!). I mentioned it to Rob when I came in. “Oh, yeah, that was in (neighbour)’s yard earlier. Don’t worry, it’ll probably blow out of our yard before we go out there again” (we’re nothing if not community-spirited).

Twenty minutes later, Sprocket was asking to go out. Since Rob has been spoiling me all day today and yesterday, I thought I’d pay him back by taking his turn with the dog.

We got outside, and I noticed that the box hadn’t yet left our yard. I expected the same sort of reaction from Sprocket as we’d had from Doozer – I mean, this was Sprocket! The Crab Marauder!

And what did he do? We got outside, he peed, and then he set eyes on the box. And oh my stars. You would have thought that the box was threatening his life. Tail between his legs, running straight toward the house, up the steps, and scratching at the door, all the while casting furtive glances back over his shoulders at the box as if at any moment it was going to rise up and consume us all.

Wuss.

Here is a bad cellphone picture I took of him last night (no flash, no lights on in the room) after I had tried putting a ponytail in his face hair. Do you think maybe the daisy was de trop?

So this weekend I slept at least 10 hours every night and ended up napping for an hour or two each day. Add to that the fact that I had a fever for about an hour and a half on Sunday and I was convinced that I had THE SWIMES!

Now, THE SWIMES doesn’t mean swine flu. Seriously, I mean it. I just kind of… Okay so my nephew. He’s four and a half, almost five. They got their H1N1 shots last week. Later on when I was talking to him, he said “I got a needle so that I don’t get some swimes! Swimes are bad ones for you.” so I have appropriated “SWIMES” to mean anything that is a bad one for me.

And whatever it is I have right now is a bad one for me.

All day today my head kept getting more and more… echo-y? You know how it is when you’re not dizzy, but it feels like your head is wrapped in cotton wool and you’re about 10 miles away from anyone else? That. Trying to make it through the Remembrance Day assembly (I cried, like every other year – and that video makes no sense to me, since stores are closed on Remembrance Day. I actually cried when we saw this video), and stand through O Canada and In Flanders Fields. I felt horrible the entire time – and guilty, because I wasn’t able to give my full attention.

Then trying to do a review with my 9th graders, stumbling over my words. Having my 8th graders research different aspects of medieval life (food, clothing, games, houses) and finding one guy having decided instead to read an article about Call of War Duty Hero Craft or some such video game, and a girl googling how to lose belly fat fast (because apparently my lessons are so very insipirational that they inspire a thirst for knowledge!).

So that is that for that. I am home now, Rob is spoiling me, and I am enjoying intermittent puppy snuggles. And tomorrow’s gonna be another day.

Every morning at about 5:30 or 6 (6:30 if they’re drunk or something) the dogs wake me up and I take them for their morning constitutional. We go out to the field beside our house, we walk around, I sing them little songs, they pee and poop, then we head home. If it’s earlier than 5:30 I lay on the couch and try to get in another 15 or 20 minutes of naptime (if it’s 4:00 like they were doing for a week or so in September, I try to sleep for at least another hour!). People are like “Why are you waking up to take them out so early! Are you spoiling them!” – well, because that’s when they need to go. There hasn’t been one time that we’ve brought them out that they haven’t actually needed to do their thing. There’s only been a handful of times since they came to live with us that they haven’t pooped first thing in the morning… so I think they’re on a pretty good schedule. Usually once we come back in they settle down and snuggle me (thus making me sleepier because puppy hugs! Puppy hugs make you drowsy, it’s true science) and we hang out until it’s time for me to shower and get ready. Then I wake Rob up and he comes down and does his thing with them when I leave for work.

Now, these puppies (are they still puppies? They’re 5 months now) are very awesome, and smart. But at the same time, they are like little kids in that anytime anything vaguely interesting is in front of them, they want to grab it up and chomp it. Life is like a buffet for them. A huge, stinky buffet. They find anything that smells like anything. It’s like they have RADAR. And their tastes aren’t all that discriminating. Old piece of potato that fell behind the stove two months ago and I finally got around to sweeping out back there don’t judge me? CHOMP! I once caught them licking a dead bird that was under the trees in our backyard. Luckily they were only 8 weeks old at the time and the bird was way huger than their mouths. You can guarantee that if a bird died in our yard today? Chomp. Sprocket is usually the first one to find anything and pick it up, then Doozer grabs it from him, then most of the time it ends up broken in half and Rob and I are left chasing down two dogs with half a rotten zucchini from the neighbours’ compost bin each.

We can always tell when they’ve grabbed up something they shouldn’t have because they try to keep it secret, but they’re SO BAD at keeping secrets! Turning their heads away, zooming off into a corner where usually they just like to be around people, looking all innocent “What’s up?” with an old paper towel hanging out of the side of their mouth – so generally we get the stuff away from them right away. They don’t really fight to keep it, either – they know that we’re the boss and that we can have stuff from inside their mouths if we want to have it.

The field beside our house is huge, and flat, with short grass. For the past, oh, I’d say week or so, every other morning, Sprocket has come into the house with a crab leg in his mouth. A crab leg! I know he’s getting them in the field, but I never notice him finding them, and I don’t ever see a legless crab out there in the field. Of course it’s dark out when I take them outside in the morning, so I don’t ever see him picking it up. And he doesn’t do any of the secret “hide the treasure” moves until we get in the house – it’s like “okay I have crab leg in my mouth but first I must concentrate on pooping then we’ll go back to the lair and I will chomp the heck out of this thing!” I have scoured that field in the daylight and haven’t seen hide nor hair of a crab or any other crustacean. Rob takes them out during the day, and they haven’t found any crabby parts when they’ve been out with him. Yet, morning after morning, as soon as we get in the house, Sprocket tries to make a run for his crate, which is pretty dumb when he still has his leash on. I drag him back to me. He’s got a look in his eyes like “This thing is so stinky and gross! I have to eat it! C’mon, Mom, let me have this flavour in my mouth! It was free!” I pry his mouth open, and there is the crab leg. I take it from him. He looks at me sadly, like he’s thinking “Well, it was worth a try. I knew I wouldn’t get to keep it”. I feel guilty and give him a Milk Bone. He carries the Milk Bone over to the pile of Milk Bones he and Doozer have left in the corner because apparently they don’t actually like Milk Bones anymore. Can you blame them? Why eat a Milk Bone if you could have some garbage?

It’s been a couple of days since the last crab leg extravaganza so I wasn’t really on the lookout this morning. The dogs didn’t seem to be, either – no more sniffing around one particular spot than usual, nothing. But then, as soon as we got in the house? ZOOM. Sprocket Rocket was headed for his crate. I caught up with him, opened his mouth – just in time to see him swallow this piece of crab leg. I think it was just the pincer or something because it was too small for me to grab and get out of his mouth so down the hatch it went. He looked so triumphant! OH HELLS YEAH I ATE THAT GARBAGE DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? Doozer looked on, in awe of his crafty brother. I shrugged. “Well played, Sprock. You got it this time. No more crab legs though, dude. It’s gross!”

I woke Rob, went off to take my shower, and told him about the morning’s misadventure while I tried to find the car keys (they were hung up on the car-key thing. I never look there because I never hang them up).

I just got to work, and this is the email that was waiting for me from my husband:

Well, in a shock to no one, Sprocket puked a little while ago. I then forced him to attend a seminar entitled “Shellfish from the outdoors: Friend or Foe?” which seems to have taught him nothing at all, as he almost immediately attempted to eat his barf. Rather disheartening.

Shine on, you crazy diamond. Shine on.

So, I teach like 190 kids. BUT – they’re all sick. I don’t know if it’s H1N1, or regular flu, or just colds and paranoia, but depending on the class, between 25 and 45% of my students have been out of class these past few days. Our janitors have given up on sweeping the floors, and are using all their time to wipe down desks and door handles. The local newspapers are full of headlines like “Where To Find The Best Buy On Hand Sanitizer!” and “H1N1: It’s Coming For You!”
And of course, there’s a shortage of H1N1 vaccine, people waiting in line for hours, and the populace is freaking the heck out.

I, being a hypochondriac, am emailing Rob during every break I have at work with all-caps “I HAVE THE SWIMES!” subject lines. And I know full well that it’s just me overreacting, because why not follow the crowd?

Hallowe’en went well. I wore my costume to work on Friday. Unfortunately I have no pictures; I didn’t get Rob to take any and although a coworker did take a couple, he didn’t email them to me as I requested. So I will just tell you that I was Dorothy for Hallowe’en.

No, not this Dorothy:

… THIS Dorothy:

(WHAT is going on with her sleeves? My sleeves were much more evenly distributed. Were hers like that in the movie? Why?)

Complete with ruby slippers (actually $9 shoes from Payless that Rob covered with glitter glue for me) and pigtails (courtesy of this wig). The kids all really liked it, although some of them thought I was Anne of Green Gables, and others thought I was “Wendy! From Wendy’s!”.

The neatest thing was that I hadn’t discussed my costume with anyone at work, and no one knew what I was going to wear. And then I walked into my homeroom, and one of my students was dressed as a scarecrow, and another was dressed as the Tin Man. Another student was dressed like a witch (entirely unrelated). Apparently another guy in my homeroom had a lion costume, but he was sick that day. I had a photo taken with them, but as I said, my coworker hasn’t emailed them yet.

This weekend has been spent relaxing and enjoying not having a ton of marking or grading to do. This coming week is going to be busy, too, with interviews and all, so the weekend was a brief but welcome respite.

How was your weekend?