Under the Weather

I suppose if I had to get a cold — though still not convinced it’s absolutely necessary to do so — this is as good of a time as any to get one.

I started feeling like I was getting a cold yesterday afternoon, right after I’d finished buying the last Christmas present. Luckily, I’d finished Christmas candy and cookies Monday. So there’s really nothing left to do but sit around and wait for Christmas day.

Naturally, though, Leslie and I had plans for Tuesday evening. We were going to the Puget Sound Revels, the first play/musical we’ve gone to since last year’s Revels. Of course, we couldn’t go to a play without also going out to dinner at the newly-remodeled Europa restaurant, a favorite of ours here in Tacoma.

Perhaps it was the glass of wine, the fine food, or the infectious mood of the Revel players, but overall the evening went better than I expected and for much of the evening I forgot I was coming down with a cold.

I’m sure I have one today, but by sleeping in and drinking lots of liquids I’ve managed to get through the day without resorting to sedation so far. It seems appropriate that today is the shortest, darkest day of the year and somehow I don’t feel quite so bad having to stay inside when clouds mask the sky and it’s wet and dreary.

I have a long tradition of Christmas colds, though perhaps it merely seems that way because being sick at Christmas seems memorable. Perhaps it’s the stress I put on myself trying to make Christmas better than it can possibly be.

For me, at least, stress and colds go together. I use to make it habit to get colds at the end-of-the-quarter push in college and capped the habit off by contacting a severe case of mononucleosis at the end of my senior year. I ended up in the hospital, and it took nearly three months before I could report to the Army, but that’s another story for another time. Needless to say, I know stress is my enemy, but being a type “A” it’s not always possible to keep stress out of my life, and I’m not sure I would really want to even if I could.