There are two men and a dog in this house. The eldest seems has been known to chase many things but as of today the thing he seems to have caught is a cold.
It wasn’t something he hoped or wanted to catch but but given the bouts of sneezing he seems to have done a fine job of it.
Wonton soup helped out on a Friday night but he would have preferred a different sort of Chanukah gift, some chicken or matza ball soup.
Thought about reaching out to SQ headquarters but remembered he is playing secret agent man on double secret probation.
The cold doesn’t feel like the one he had during the winter of 2017. That sticks out as being particularly bad, walking three flights of stairs was particularly onerous.
He looked so bad the guy who delivered soup to his apartment told him he ought to go see a doctor. He felt like crap so by the time it occurred to him to sneeze on the obnoxious delivery man the guy had long since left the stoop.
If it had been post Covid the delivery man probably would have run home and doused himself in bleach.
Dancing In The Fire While Composing A Speech
He looked at the tale of his lucky shorts and thought about adding to it and wondered if anyone would recognize them.
Some years back he had paced around a Westin in Dallas while working out the details of what he would say in an important meeting.
Whether the shorts had played any sort of role was debatable but the meeting had been life changing and helped set some of the path he took forward afterwards.
He figured the most important part of it was it had confirmed some thoughts and ideas about what sort of future he wanted to build.
There was quite a bit of value in that as it helped construct a basic roadmap and while it hadn’t cleared up every question it had provided enough for him to feel like he knew some things he hadn’t before.
Sometimes that was all a person needed to move forward, to feel like they had a pretty good idea the path they were taken held merit.
It had also helped remind him the road from where you stood to where you wanted to go wasn’t always straight and that sometimes there were multiple zigs and zags.
Heck, he was on the verge of giving up on a few things when the unexpected happened and he found himself quoting Al Pacino in Godfather III.
It wasn’t exactly the same, but the feeling of “just when I think I am out they suck me back in” made sense to him.
So he shrugged his shoulders and silently muttered, “you came this far, you can go a little further.”
It Is Too Darn Cold
The dog didn’t appreciate the man sneezing 13 times in a row and gave him a quizzical look.
The man looked down at the dog and said it is too darn cold to have a cold and then started choking. It wasn’t because of the cold or his having tried to drink or eat anything.
No, it was because the dog was engaged in biological warfare. He was all of 23 pounds but his gas should have come from a much larger animal.
“Why are you trying to kill me. I feed and take care of you. I already feel like hell, why would you do this. What have I done to earn your disgust.”
The dog wagged his tail and appeared to smile when the man warned him against pulling that crap in bed.
“You can keep my legs warm with your fur, that is it.”
****
The picture above is from the trails next to the place where the man had survived the nasty cold of 2017. He had moved there in 2016 and had taken to walking the trail and grabbing shots of sunsets on a regular basis.
He had encountered bobcats, coyotes and rattle snakes during those walks out on the trail and had managed to get along and go along with the creatures.
If only the cold would do the same or at least let him stop sneezing, that would be a nice change of pace.
