*Sniff, Sniff*

Joel and I have both been suffering from colds for the last couple days. Tonight Joel has the headache from hell that I had the other day. *sad face* I’ve now progressed to occasional stuffiness with a good amount of the sneezes thrown in. At least it’s progressing. Hopefully both of our colds will be gone in the next couple days and we can go back to our normal non-scrunchy selves.

Side note: I have a funny sneeze. In fact I have made strangers laugh out loud when they hear me sneeze. It’s not my fault though, it’s genetic. My dad sneezes like the big bad wolf, you’d think it would blow the house down. My mom on the other hand has much more normal sneeze, at least at first. The funny part is the end. Some people call it a backfire. Some have said it sounds like a cat meowing. It’s like “achoo, hew!” Lucky me got a mix of both so it’s something like “AAHCHOO, hew!”

Anyway, I consider myself a fairly healthy person. The last time I got majorly sick was about five years ago, and the time before that was almost ten years ago. I do however find myself with the occasional common cold. Sneezy, stuffy, phlegmy (is that a word?) grossness. Since it is called the common cold I assume some of you suffer from it from time to time. Here’s how I generally survive mine.*

First of all, the minute I feel like I’m getting a cold, you know, that little itch in the back of your throat, I start taking tons of vitamins. Usually vitamin C and echinacea three times a day. I’ve tried Cold-Eeze before but it didn’t seem to do much and it leaves a very strange, bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Also, I’ve tried gargling lime juice and salt which is also iffy on how well it works. No word on whether adding tequila is more or less affective.

While it seems the above are helpful, I have yet to find something that actually prevents a cold from coming every time. Usually my colds are much shorter than the average person’s though so I like to think they at least help.

Once I have a cold the most important thing I take care of is my nose. I always make sure I some kind of tissue that has lotion in it. There is nothing worse to me than feeling miserable only add to it by rubbing my nose raw by using cheap tissues.

Even with great tissues I still inevitably end up with a rudolph nose. To take care of that I slather Desitin on my nose right before I fall asleep. I know it sounds weird using diaper rash ointment on your face but trust me, it works. You have to use it at night though because it doesn’t soak in quickly. So, unless you think walking around with a gooey, white nose is better than a red one, I’d wait until you go to bed.

So there you have it. Possibly a little weird but they work for me and make my colds way more bearable. What about you? What are your best tips on surviving a cold?

*disclaimer: I don’t have a medical degree of any kind. If you’re really sick, see a doctor.

Dogs can train people too

I am a bit of an overachiever.* Before we got Phoebe I did a lot of research. I not only researched the type of dog that I wanted but I read many books about puppy training. A big part of why we were getting a dog was because I was home alone a lot and frankly bored. As a flight attendant I had a lot of time off and I wanted to spend that time doing something productive.

All the books I read said that one of the most important things in dog training was establishing who the “alpha dog” is. One of the big no-no’s was allowing your new dog to sleep in your bed. The books explained that, in dog world, the leader of the pack gets the best place to sleep. It made sense to me so we set Phoebe up in a little kennel next to our bed. Any of you who have gotten a puppy know that the first couple of nights are not fun. She was normal and whined all through the night and we were good puppy parents and stuck to our rules. When she whined the first time we took her outside and after that she had to cry it out.

The thing is, we have a very quiet puppy. At the time she never barked, she just softly whined. Sometimes it would wake us up but other times it wouldn’t. Everything I’ve ever read says dogs won’t potty where they sleep… well Phoebe clearly never read those books because no matter how small we made her sleeping space we would wake up to a puddle because I wouldn’t hear her whining soon enough. I tried setting an alarm for every couple hours but after a few nights of that I was a monster during the day from lack of sleep. Like I’ve said before, I need my sleep. Joel tried being the one to take her out every couple hours at night. Even though he does better than me with little sleep, after awhile he couldn’t keep getting up every several hours either.

At first it just started with the alarm going off and me pulling her out of her cage in a blur. I would pull her onto the bed and before I could either wake Joel up or take her outside myself I’d fall back asleep. The next morning I’d wake up and she would be sleeping in the crook of my arm, happy as can be. After a couple nights of this (and not waking up to a peed on bed) we knew she could hold it that long so we tried not setting an alarm. We woke up to a mess every single morning. It was so frustrating that after awhile I just started bringing her into bed with me. It went against the books but it worked.

And you know what? Other than the housebreaking thing (which was an issue no matter where she slept) we’ve not had any training problems with her. She’s incredibly well behaved. Even people who don’t like dogs think she’s a sweetheart.

Most of the time she snuggles with me but every once in awhile she wants to get a little snuggle time in with Joel too.

She’s being shy. It’s first thing in the morning so she hasn’t fixed her face yet.

These are seriously some of my favorite moments with her and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I don’t care what the books say.

*That is probably definitely an understatement.

Sinus headache from Hell

Today my head has cycled between feeling like this:

to feeling like this:

Not at all fun. Somebody please kill me now.

Only in the Midwest

Early this morning, while a blizzard swirled outside, I was lying snug in my bed fast asleep. My puppy was curled up under my arm on one side and the other side was pressed up against my husband. What I was dreaming I’ll never remember because I was jostled awake by a rattling. It sounded like it was either a huge gust of wind, something hitting our building or something exploding close by. The entire apartment shook for a few seconds and then was still again. I barely woke up and would’ve shut my eyes and fallen back asleep, thinking I dreamed the whole thing. Joel however, sprung out of bed and gasped, “What was that?” Since I was still coming out of a fairly deep sleep (having only fallen asleep four hours earlier) I was pretty confused and a little annoyed. Joel excitedly jumped out of bed and began throwing his clothes on while asking, “Was that an earthquake?”

“I have no idea. Come back to bed!” I moaned while trying to get back to sleep as quickly as possible.

“I need to check things out.”

“Check what out? If it was an earthquake what are you going to do about it?”

“Well if it was a bomb I’ll be able to see the glow from the city.”

“Joel, no matter what you’re going to see a glow from the city, it’s Chicago, it’s a huge city.”

By this time Joel was out the door. I was too awake by that point so I tried to speed up the process by rolling over and checking the “nearby” section of my Twitter app. Sure enough, people were talking about feeling something and wondering what exactly it was.

I heard Joel come back in the house and then I heard the TV turn on. Keep in mind this whole thing happened maybe three minutes before. I’m fairly certain no news goes on the air that quickly. Joel watched for a couple of minutes then came back in the room and grabbed the dog. Up until that point Phoebe had been sleeping soundly through all the excitement and didn’t seem very pleased to be pulled out of her warm bed.

“People are talking about feeling something on Twitter.” he informed me, “There’s nothing on the news though.” He again went outside, this time with the dog.

By this time I figured I may as well document the craziness so I began twittering.

I also did a little research and found out that it was indeed an earthquake and that the magnitude was 3.8. At the time the site said it was a 4.3 so I guess it was somehow downgraded in the last 17 hours. Not sure exactly how that works.

When he finally came back inside for the second time I asked him again what exactly he expected to accomplish outside. His reasoning was that if it happened again he didn’t want the apartment to fall on him. This was never mentioned to me so apparently he was totally cool with leaving me to hold up the building. Don’t forget, he took the dog with him… At least I know where I stand.

Eventually we both calmed down and managed to doze a little while before our alarms went off. Only in the Midwest can you have a blizzard and an earthquake at the same time. What a night.

Rambling

It’s snowing like crazy here. It’s so pretty. I am fighting off a cold by getting a lot of sleep and taking tons of vitamin C. These past two weeks have been really stressful and I didn’t get very good sleep the whole time. I’ve been home for the last couple nights and I’ve been in bed by 9:30 or earlier both nights. It sucks that I’m kind of sick the two nights that I’m home. At least I’m home, in my own bed and I get to snuggle with my loves.

I really need a car. That would make it so I could come home most nights. Unfortunately we just can’t afford to buy another car right now though. I love my sister and I adore my nephews but it’s really hard being away from home so many nights. I’ve decided to stay here tonight and go out to my sister’s in the morning. It will probably make for a short night but at least it will be a short night in my own bed.

I’m just so tired. Even with all the sleep I’ve gotten the last several nights I’m still tired. Without getting addicted to caffeine I’m not sure how to get over this exhaustion. It’s really not fun. This post probably makes no sense, hence the title. I have a bunch of blog post ideas but I can’t muster up the energy to write about any of them right now. I’ll try not to phone in too many more of my posts but tonight you’ll have to leave a message after the beep.

*beeeep*