How to Receive and Get Through a Cold

When you are full of cold, or any respiratory infection that keeps you from being productive yet productive enough to keep you out of the hospital, work is the furthest thing from the front burner.  Today, this is the case for me.  Still in order to keep writing while the brain is half asleep, I thought it would be amazeballs to offer advice on being sick while sick.
It's either this or, "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," a hundred times.

What?  I Never Get Sick.
You will wake up one morning and feel one of a few things.  First and most obvious is the feeling of being hit by a tractor trailer while sleepwalking and miraculously not exploding into a blood smear.  When this happens, you are sick.
If you wake up and feel like your tongue has swollen so badly that it is pressing against the bottom of your jaw like a baby rounding the home stretch out of vag-ville, you are sick.  And, when you wake up one morning feeling like someone lit a firecracker inside one of your nostrils, oh yeah are you sick.
The first thing you shouldn't do is fret.  Fretting requires the use of brain cells.  Instead, make a list of all of the places you've been.  The place that feels as close to yesterday is probably where you caught the cold.  If you were there with a loved one  or a very good friend, you probably caught it from them.  Like me.
This is the second time I catch a cold from my husband.

Revenge Is Mine!
It would be pertinent to wonder just what kind of woman would allow her husband to bring infectious germs home twice.  But I ask you to change your thinking.  Ask the husband instead what kind of man he is to be sick, get cared for and then after re catching the same fucking cold, decide to be inconsiderate to his wife.  I asked Mike to please sleep on the couch as he was sick, but he decided to be an asshole.  Now that I am sick Mike is my butler, cook and janitor.

Getting Through
When you are sick with a cold unless you are bedridden with something more than a cold, get up and wash your ass.  Overnight as you slept of the NyQuil, your body sweated out your cold symptoms.  Showering will get rid of the "cold" stink and make you feel a little better.
You should also brush your teeth.  Really.  Being sick automatically warrants visitors and visitors aren't going to tell you how busted your breath is out of consideration for your condition.  Do yourself and them a favor.  Floss, rinse, brush.
Move around.  Even if you're pacing from your bedroom to your couch and your couch to the kitchen, movement is good.  Get that stiffness out of your body, let the blood flow.  It will also help you feel better.
Make a "fixer elixir."  Everyone has a fixer elixir.  It's that one drink or food concoction you rely on to get you to better health fast.  Mine is a mix of Fanta Orange soda with EmergenC.  Drink with a straw to get all of the bits that didn't break down in the soda while mixing.  Chase your elixir with water to flush out the toxins in your body from the cold and the soup you've been eating that is chuck full of sodium if nothing else.
Simple protein and carbs.  Being sick is a prerequisite for soup.  I personally don't subscribe to soup as medicine unless my mom makes it.  Canned soup is for when you are well.
If you have an appetite, keep your meals small.  While I'm under the weather I eat sardines, or chicken wings and I limit my carbs to nuts or fruit and veg with potassium.  I also get my Chinese food fix in, but simple stuff rice with chicken, no sauces or dishes that will send me to the toilet.  And speaking of...
Poop.  You have to poop while you are ill because poop has the toxins and bacteria your body no longer wants or, needs.  Drink loads of water to ensure easier pooping.  If you are not pooping before you head for the colace, try a salad, coffee, and cooked leafy greens.  Stool softeners can cause more pain than what they are worth.  If you don't believe me I wish you the best of luck sleeping the night with wicked gas.

So.  I don't think there is a need to recap, you either take the advice or write your own when you get sick.

Make Me Want It

Do you know what is the worst thing about snow storms?  Snow storms make you lazy.  Snow storms encourage the sloth in all of us to curl up and happily do nothing.  Or curl up and eat everything.
Snow storms do not promote productivity of any kind.  And forget about what those beat TV journalists say standing in the eye of it, they really want to be curled up doing nothing and eating everything just like you are.
Snow storms are a cock block.  Then, snow storms make you grovel.
(Well, who else was going to clean up that mess of wet powdery goodness?)

The most recent snow storm has done nothing for my inspiration.  I've spent the better part of three days watching reruns of the history of Saturday Night Live on VH1.  Did you know Elaine from Seinfeld was a member of the cast in the eighties?

I feel like my toy chihuahua Cooper.  I sleep.  I stretch.  I scratch.  I do my spinny thing and go right back to sleep.

On Instagram, I see the photos of folk so inspired by snow they took pictures in it.  While very pretty, they don't tug at the heart strings to make me write.  I mean think about it, how many stories in snow end well?  It's all about the view.
So thanks, for reading this complaint.

La Douleur Exquise

The excruciating pain experienced when wanting someone you cannot have.  Refers to the emotion of the person whose love isn't reciprocated.

In every person's life there is that moment.  The moment you place all of your eggs in one basket, deliver it to the object of your affection, and watch them crush your eggs and basket with the force of Godzilla traversing Tokyo.
For smart people, this moment usually ends in a tear filled tantrum until blackout, thus repressing the sting of rejection.  The rest of us however including myself, meet this moment assured there can be no torture worse than be rejected and, you offer yourself, an effigy to the awkward moments that follow until you've won.  Nobody wins, but one thing is certain.  This moment will become a chapter in your life marked, numbered, and named.

My "moment" is called Paul D'Angelo.

From the 10th grade until we graduated high school, I was sufferably and inexplicably head over heels for Paul D'Angelo.  Paul played on the basketball team, he was wicked good at math and six foot five inches of cute as button.  Lots of girls thought he was cute.  But unlike them I thought Paul was an adonis.  To show him such reverence I sat ridiculously close to him in the classes we shared.  I would eavesdrop his conversations with classmates and but in with what I thought was witty and clever, even if i hadn't been invited to join.  Even our lunch tables were in ear shot of one another.
Anyone would think that this kind of dedication deserved an award.  In fact, this dedication indeed competed with my schoolwork, household chores, and a year spent as a student in an afternoon performing arts high school.  Through it all, I met the challenge of getting Paul to want to be my boyfriend with the confidence of Wyle E. Coyote.  Without fail, I landed every attempt with a poof ball to the hard, cold ground of reality.
Reality had a name too, and she was called Katherine.

Katherine was blonde, built like a southern cheerleader, intelligent and intelligently attentive to Paul's charm.  You see, Paul had a crush on Katherine.  It wasn't in the same way I had a crush on Paul, but she had his balls and heart wrapped around her finger.  It was gross.
Katherine had a number of boyfriends despite Paul's intentions.  She was a rival but not.  One day she became a true rival as I attempted to make a deposit in the bank of Paul worship before our math class, masked as a quick convo over a project we were assigned to work as a group on.  She blocked my attempt and that turned into what I like to call, "The Stupidest Catfight Heard round' the School."
It went something like this.
Me: (skittishly confident) So Paul, I thought maybe you could do this part of the project.
Katherine: Isn't there another time you can talk to Paul?
Me: I'm sorry Katherine, but I wasn't talking to you.  I was talking to Paul.
(Both of the felines are sideways pacing with heavily arched backs.  Hisses slowly evolve into growls.)
Paul: Uh.
Me: As I was saying...
Katherine: Jezrie, Paul doesn't want to talk to you right now.
Me: Katherine, I'm sure Paul has no problem speaking for himself.
Paul: I'm not getting into this.
Katherine: Like I said, Paul doesn't want to talk to you right now.  Why don't you go back to your seat? (Scene)
It was awful.  Cringetastic even.

It was a massacre.

A few hours later in Spanish class, Katherine came in.  She stopped to say hello to her then boyfriend, Victor, but made a b-line for me instead.  She crouched to get at eye level with me as I was seated.  She apologized.
I was so confused by this gesture and what occurred during math that I nodded and said nothing.  But here, and now I'd like to "replay" what occurred had my senses not been knocked the fuck out.
Katherine: Jezrie, (and God did the way she said my name sound condescending) I'm sorry for what happened earlier.  I just thought you were trying to bother Paul, so I acted.  It wasn't mature.
Jezrie: Considering he's my assigned partner for a project I will end up doing all pieces of and, that you had no idea what was going on, yeah I'd agree it wasn't mature of you.  While this attempt to apologize seems to be, I've had time to think about our encounter earlier.  I also have something mature to share with you.
Katherine: I don't understand.
Jezrie: I don't expect you to.  Because of today, there will never be anything I can do to win Paul's affection.  In two years time it will have appeared things change when rumors about Paul and I hooking up begin to spread.  And we will be.  This isn't so much a detriment to you, but the growing I will end up having to do after the damage of allowing myself to be used because you were "unattainable," will lead me to meet the man of my dreams in England, where we will both be studying.  He and I will marry and, he will believe in and love me in ways I had been looking for in Paul and, other little boys that follow.  You and Paul will get married and have babies and live happily ever after, but I will be happier.  I will be happier because I never had to hide the true intent of my heart like this game you and Paul will play with each other for years.  I embarrassed myself, I disrespected myself and, I allowed it.  I had to in order to appreciate my heart's reflection when it would finally arrive.
Katherine: I really don't...
Jezrie: Get it. (Pause) Yeah, I said you wouldn't.  But I do.  So maybe it's me who owes you an apology after all.  (Scene)

If only...

Blood Clots and Cancer

I don't like long stretches of time that pass even though so much is happening.  In near-on three days, Michael and I have gotten some pretty shitty news.  As I am usually thinking of our next conversation in my "scheduled breaks," receiving the news compounded my already full thoughts before spilling over and, sending me into sulk mode.
Monday night, we were on our way to my grandmother's house to talk to her about possibly visiting the ER to treat a blood clot found in her lower right leg.  Before we left our house, Michael found me in our bedroom.
"Granddad is in hospice with liver and lung cancer."  He walked toward the window and parted the curtains with his hand to look outside.  "He only has a few weeks left."
I wrapped my arms around Michael like a towel to a child soaked by rain.
We managed that night to get my grandmother medication to breakdown the blood clot.  The next day, Michael and I began planning for his granddad's end.  Because we've been told there are only a matter of weeks left before he passes, as with most things that are given weeks to live or die, sometimes weeks pass onward accumulating into months, then years.  The only thing we do know is Mike will be there at the end thanks to help from my mother.  Our poor-assed broke-ness means I have to stay behind.

Last night my mother told me something about death I found fascinating.  She said death is something unlike other milestones in life, for every time it happens it becomes a distinctly new experience despite the fact it has already happened before.  In 2011, Michael lost his parents.  His mother went first from cancer in February.  Seven months later Michael's father died after arterial plaque lodged itself into his heart.
The severity of each death, even how close in time each death occurred is overshadowed by the distinctness of the losses.  Generally speaking it doesn't even matter how close a person could be to the loved one they are losing.  Death always seems to bring with it a new set of rules each time the game is played.
For days I've been wondering about that feeling of newness encapsulated by the experience of death.  You could say the feeling of newness is comparable to the beginning of a romantic relationship, but you would be wrong.  There are lessons learned or, ignored each person takes with them from relationship to relationship.  With death there are no lessons.  There may not even be enough time to get over one loss before you're hit again with another like my husband was.
Death just sucks.

Today, we got the opportunity to talk to family about what is going on with Michael's granddad.  It turns out this hospice is actually a nursing home.  After the experience of losing Michael's mother, I learned there are definite differences between nursing homes and hospice.  The latter is your appointment confirmation letter from death.  Michael's granddad does spend a great deal of time resting at the nursing home and the medicines he is being given are keeping him pain free.  Our family do visit regularly and for now we are just waiting.

During the weekend we can find out more about Michael's granddads' condition.  

Sacrifices

Last night around 1130pm, Michael and I got into an argument over money.  We argued because I thought we should cancel our personal training sessions at our gym.  Michael thought we would be able to afford the sessions, and even created a budget where monthly spending on these sessions were factored in.  However, on the weeks the personal training sessions would be taken out of our bank account, we would fall into the red.  And, the red is bad.

Months earlier, the color of our account status wasn't important to me since we were both seeing green.  As a verbatim hearing recorder transcribing cases heard by administrative law judges for the Social Security Administration earned me $50 for every case that went to hearing.  In any given month I could, and did earn $500-$2500.  When I got paid we lived like kings for days worry free because Michael earns a weekly check.  And, as long as our bills were being paid we were cool.
Then, a scent began to linger too long in the air.  The scent although comely became a problem.  For me.
Any person who knows me personally has experienced my fragrance.  I am a lover of fragrance, buying and wearing.  I turned my husband into a fragrance wearer as I grew up with a true connoisseur of cologne, my dad.  Every employment experience  I've gone through had absolutely no issue with my fragrance or the kind I used.  Even working in the poorly ventilated SSA hearing rooms, those who occupied the room with me had no issue with my perfume.  But, when a change in the administrative law judge roster paired me with a judge with more sensitive nasal passages then mine, I soon enough found myself jobless because of my perfume.

Michael and I took the new adjustment in stride unprepared for the reality check we would receive.  When it came, we decided to plan our budget wisely and spend within and at times, underneath our means.  We also agreed I wouldn't have to return to work to focus my energy on creative writing.

Last night after our money kerfuffle ended, I lulled myself to sleep perusing the want ads on indeed.com.  I began to wonder if the sacrifice of me not working is enough to prevent more financial debates.

I want to write.  It may not reward us with wealth of any kind right now, but time and effort will eventually tell the tale of success if I play my cards right.

I think about how things could have been different for me at work had I not been stubborn about my fragrance.  Already understanding there would be clients with respiratory difficulties at hearings, I wore a light perfume.  It wasn't enough even though there were clients, expert witnesses, client representatives, translators, advocates and a few client relatives that occupied the room I did with no issue, many fragranced and a few stronger than mine.  It was a nit-pick struggle I lost because I hate being nit-picked.  Sixth graders nit-pick.  Moms, dads and grandparents nit-pick.  The workplace should be void of it.  Still, I'd be employed if I allowed myself to be nit-picked.  I'd also be careless with my money if I was still employed, because I allowed myself to be nit-picked.  Michael and I would still be living with my mother because of our financial carelessness if I were still employed because I allowed myself to be nit-picked.  Dizzying, isn't it?
How about this:
Thanks to what some might call a fruitless sacrifice of losing my job, Mike and I have our own flat with a reasonable rent bill including amenities.  We can afford to food shop, have internet and, enjoy Chinese Food Sunday on Michael's wage alone.
We sacrifice the "perfection" two incomes might afford us because Michael believes in my ability to communicate through the written word.  This perfection includes restful nights sleep, start to finish.  Cork and a sleep sounds machine currently help us achieve the aforementioned as we have neighbors who think they are porn stars and apparently want us and, anyone else who hears to know.  It's cringe-worthy.  We know sex is happening on the other side of the wall but J. Louis Vuitton Christ, it sounds like live surgery with no drugs is going on instead.
I digress.

Last night, Michael and I fought over money.  Today, we saved money canceling our personal training sessions.  Sacrifice may not be comfortable but we are $120 up.

r-R-Racism!

I openly admit my blog is more of a e-diary of my journey to be a creative writer.  There will be times entries are personal like the first few I've posted and, there will be others... personal public service announcements that are too important to point a blind eye toward.

Check it.  We live in a racist country.  We eat, breathe, read, and breed racism.  We are also hypocritical racists, pointing the finger at other racists for their racism without looking inward at our own racism.
Any dictionary defines racism as, "the belief that some races of people are better than others."  Slavery, The Civil Rights movement, President Obama's re-election campaign are only a few of the many blatant historical events expressing America's issue with race.  As bothersome as these events have been for America as a nation, there is one event, reoccurring and thought provoking that could change our outlook on race relations and, how those relations feed the vehicle of racism.  That event, my friends is love.
There is a scene is Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" where a group of black wives sit together talking about the idiosyncratic reality of black men being interested in white women.  Dating white women.  Having sex with white women.  Being seen out in public with white women.  Watching this scene as a teenager I scoffed at what seemed to me to be pedantic and antiquated notions of what is considered normal in what races should love and marry.  Then I met my husband, and was thrown into the conversation.

In 2005 while on a student exchange in Preston, England, I met Michael Courtney, half Brit, half Irish and all white.  Our mutual attraction led to a relationship.  In early December of that year, Michael's all Brit and white friends came to visit for a day and met me, a Connecticut born, almond skin toned Boricua of Potorro and Nuyorican parents.  It wasn't surprising to me his friends naturally assumed I was black as a lot of blacks in the UK looked like me, either children of black, or black and white parents.  It was however refreshing that after correcting their assumption, I was immediately integrated into their fold of friends.
While we lived in the UK, Michael and I were freely void of strange looks and incoherent comments in reaction to our interracial coupling.  Michael's parents took me into the family and finished raising me as one of their own when I had no place to live after a student housing setup went kaput.  There was nothing out of the ordinary in terms of our experience as a couple.
Then, we moved to America.
Being back in my home nation, in my home town, I felt confident Michael and I would galavant the streets of New Haven holding hands, kissing and having fun with each other just as we did in the UK.  But, I was wrong.  Whenever we walked the stretch of Whalley Avenue that is predominantly black, we would hear things like, "git it girl," "what?!," "oh no," and my personal favorite, "assholes."  Clearly, our bubble was popped.

Michael and I aren't the only interracial couple to come under the glaring eye and ignorant voice of people who just don't get love does not discriminate.  On January 4th, a Georgia couple were in the news after complaining to a restaurant whose valet had racially insulted them on a ticket left on their car key with the slur, "jungle fever."  The couple who are black and white were offended and made an example of the black valet when they asked the fellow be fired and won.  But the media portrayal led me and other readers to assume the valet was white, thus prolonging the black versus white issue.

Going back to the scene in "Jungle Fever," a film about a black man who takes on an extramarital relationship with a white woman, I may have scoffed at the notions being discussed as a teen, but now as a woman I understand.  My history classes were littered with lessons on discrimination and racism in our evolution as a people. What wasn't really discussed in depth were the forced interracial relations between slaves and slave masters.  Being a mulatto carried a stigma in the era of slavery.  As the years rolled forward, it was illegal for a black person and a white person to be in a relationship and, those who did were caught and jailed.  Remember Mr. and Mrs. Loving?

Today as we live in America under a democratic administration headed by a black president, can't we begin to take a look at how and who we love without being weighed down by the stigma of ignorance?  I'm not just talking about couplings between men and women either.

As Hollywood films portray, almost all romances begin and end happily even if the somewhere in the middle gets rocky.  Jungle Fever ended with the separation of the black man and white woman.  But, what if it didn't?  What if the black man divorced his black wife and moved in with his white girlfriend?  What if the black man's child learned to live with the strength of her mother and father being happy living and loving how they please?  What if the film itself was enhanced under the microscope so that viewers could see that even in the black culture of the film the darker black men were married or coupled with lighter hued black women?  Isn't it crazy how these questions are making you think?  Or, is it crazier that we haven't already been asking ourselves, and each other these questions?

Of all the stigmas that plague our country, racism is one that can be heavily modified if not eradicated, only if people start thinking and acting differently.  As a Puerto Rican, I don't have the public historical account of the enslavement of my ancestors with forced interracial relations, and further embattled eras of acceptance and equality.  That could be because historians haven't gotten to it, but I think they are already burdened with the black/white relation struggles on the mainland.  Their burden is helped by the media and its continuous ignorant discussion about race relations like the recent discovery that the Romney family have a black addition.  Films and TV shows don't help historians either even if the plots include racial integration.  There is always a character that serves as the voice of the nation, the black maid and white family friends in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," the relationship between Archie Bunker and George Jefferson, even the very present couplings in "The Cosby Show."  Who else saw that the kids raised in the mid 1980s thru to the early 1990s all had boyfriends, girlfriends and, husbands and wives who were all black?

Loaded to the brim with questions and hints as to how the r-r-racist views of our country could be changed it should make you wonder, how long is too long before we are comfortable with the color of our skin?

My 12 Days: rounding the home stretch

I cannot believe it has taken this long to post.  The New Year came in inspiring change I would have liked to share, but then I allowed distractions to veer me off course.
Here's what happened.
A lovely little snow storm dumped seven inches of snow on us, seven inches we helped my mother dig out from which also meant sleeping over at hers.  We ended up losing heat on the second floor of her house and had to call in the gas company for a fix so that we wouldn't freeze our butts off later on in the night.  The visit from the gas company thickened the plot when we were informed we would need a plumber for a mechanical issue growing worse.  The start of the plumber search handed us a curve ball when we discovered my mother's house has a defective modem, hence no internet and no posting.
Though the detour has been most interesting, I have managed to keep my mind on wanting to write and, wanting to write about something and seeing we are very near the end of the 12 days of Christmas, I thought it would be fitting to discuss friends.
In the days following the holiday, I messaged a friend on Facebook who I was very close to while we were at school in England.  Matthew and I since that time have drifted apart.  Life lent a hand but I definitely played my part not being as open and considerate as I should've been.  Always regretting this I finally worked up the nerve to ask if I could write him and he accepted.

I met Matthew at a birthday party for a now mutual friend when we lived in a dorm at school.  Since the moment he asked me about taking out a liquor stain of a t-shirt, we've talked and spent a good deal of time together, a few of the times turned into adventures like the time me and a few of our friends played look out for him as he ripped a dress code sign off of a night club doorway.  Another time we took home a traffic cone.
Matthew and I would listen to the new singles he scored from iTunes, his love for the new tech, procrastinating on course work and spying.  Where we lived there was a small quad that other students would walk through and hang out in making them unintended subjects in people watching.  Matthew would report to me and our friends his exploits while at Promo, a weekly club fave.
It seemed our friendship would only grow stronger as time went on.  He paid my application fee when we applied to live together the following school year.  He even shared his food with me when I couldn't shop for myself.

If I could relive those moments exactly, I would never have taken advantage of his care and concern for me.  I would have paid him back the fee money as soon as we got to school.  I would have and should have shown him more appreciation than what I did.  And after those things happened we didn't stop being friends although i started to feel less trusted.  In hindsight, I deserved it and suffering the strain our relationship took when I chose to spend more time with my husband when he was my boyfriend without being upfront about it, or attempting to strike a balance between the two.  Over time, I felt alienated by my own choices and living with our mutual friend and friends of theirs, it wasn't long before I became wrongfully resentful.  I was an asshole.

If we can reconnect, I will feel lucky and super blessed to keep Matthew as a friend beyond Facebook.  I tell you this story because today, especially today it seems so easy to make and lose friends.  You can make a friend under false pretenses just to bully them through voice, paper or electronically.  But a real friend is hard to make and even harder to keep.  You have to be able to appreciate the differences that define you individually and foster the similarities that bind you.  Matthew is one of seven of the realest friends I've ever had.

The New Year came in inspiring change.  I am changing the course of my friendships.  I have only just begun but I hope if you are reading this out there, you too can earn back and keep what you think you may have lost.

Happy 2014.