A Sick Joke

Last Wednesday I decided to try my hand at making a breakfast pizza—which I've had on my bucket list ever since I got a complimentary slice the day we went out to my Uncle Roy's train club back in September.

I sauteed some sausage and veggies, rolled out the dough in record time, beefed up the crust since I knew it would have to act as a dam to and hold in the eggs until they firmed up, spread the thing out on my pizza oven, and scrambled half a dozen eggs in a bowl.

Then I added some salt, pepper, and garlic powder; and I poured that bad boy onto the waiting crust... remembering a moment too late that the rotating pan of my pizza oven has a bit of a bias to it as it brings the crust up close to its heating coils.

So, I got to watch about four eggs' worth of goop run right over the crust, onto the stovetop, and down inside the front-right burner.

And then I got to clean it all up. What a rush.

Half an hour and half a roll of paper towels later, I became aware of a scratchiness and a gross taste at the back of my throat and knew I would likely be sick by the next morning.

I called Athennia to see if she felt like picking up Qdoba on her way home from work so we wouldn't have to cook...

Ah! Awesome: We were both sick.

Athennia did indeed come right home and crash: She got home around 4:00 P.M., took her temperature and blew a 102, and was out cold by 4:15; and so I decided to fire up Minecraft for the first time in probably a year, and I dumped seven hours into a new Survival world before finally calling it a night around 11:00.

The next morning, I was full-blown sick as well. Athennia called out of work and spent the entire day in bed—which is something I find mentally impossible to do even when I'm sick.

She didn't have much of an appetite all day; so I whipped up some cheeseburger mac for myself and Riley for dinner.

And, for all of Athennia's chills, and aches, and lethargy, I really just had an annoying dry cough (and the resultant headache), some mild congestion, and just enough of a mental fog to not feel like doing anything productive.

Athennia called out of work again on Friday, and we had a pretty intense wind storm rip through our area throughout the morning and afternoon...

First it snapped a branch on the tree in the parking lot—so Athennia called Leo(n) and Ra(l)ph to let them know that Master Splinter was in trouble...

And then a short while later—despite a crapton of duct tape and 60 pounds' worth of dumbbells reinforcing it—our loose bedroom window blew out of its frame!

The glass brought both of my 30-pound weights down with it as it took a tumble off the window sill; but miraculously, it somehow managed to stay in one piece! And so we popped it back in and decided to try using packaging tape this time (since the adhesive on the duct tape had totally failed, probably due to sun exposure)...

...And we shall continue to not tell maintenance about it—because they sometimes have a tendency to make things worse, and it's too damn hot outside right now for them to come mess with our windows and decide halfway through that it's a bigger undertaking than they realized.

Later in the afternoon, Athennia and I crossed paths ducking into the bathroom to re-up on our respective ibuprofen dosages.

She likes to dump new batches into the master jar periodically to replenish the stash; and so our bottle has both caplets and pills in it at the moment.

I prefer the tablets, personally; but I asked what she was hoping for...

Me: You gettin' hamburgers or hotdogs this time, Kitten?

Her: <dumps three into her hand and looks at them, then looks up at me> Umm, I got a penis...

We decided to order Domino's for dinner—and had it delivered from the Morrisville store that's about 80 feet from our apartment.

(We normally avoid that location since they tend to burn their pizzas.)

Finally, I noticed just before bed that our neighbor Ruth's car was parked in the handicapped spot Mrs. Fugless's personal parking space.

Weird enough on its own, but I also saw that there appeared to be a large scrape or key mark on her front door that had not been there previously...

We weren't exactly feeling great by Saturday; but we weren't feeling any worse either. And, at any rate, we were running low on cat food and litter and needed to stock up.

We headed over to PetSmart in Fairless Hills, but they were closed due to a freak power outage. So we went right across the street to BJs instead...

...which was open and doing just fine...

...and then we went back across the street to grab dinner from Raising Cane's...

...which was closed due to a freak power outage...

Athennia crossed her fingers as we went another 500 feet around the corner to SaladWorks—which turned out to be open.

And I called the Molerat to give her the bad news about Cane's... albeit with the silver lining that I was going to bring her some Popeyes instead.

When we got home, we got a better shot of Ruth's car in the daylight...

Obligatory pic I had Athennia snap and send to my sister to let her know I was cheating on her and had hit Popeyes without her...

On Sunday Athennia and I were both feeling much better. I was about 99% back to normal physically but still just mentally dull enough to make it another Minecraft day.

But Taylor and Ahlina had plans to come down and load up their car with more of their stuff from Lou's trailer; and of course Taylor wanted to go visit her grandmother while she was down here in PA.

Athennia had told me that the plan was to take the girls to see her mom, and then go back to the trailer to unlock the door for them and come right home: So, "maybe an hour and a half, tops^TM."

Four hours later I decided to call and make sure everyone was still okay. And it turned out that Athennia's sister Sandy and her family had also come to visit Lou since it was her 70^th birthday...

From left to right, bottom to top: Lou, Sandy, Jim, Athennia, Taylor, Ahlina, Riley, Dylan, and Brendan.

Sunday evening, Athennia and I were feeling great—maybe because Riley had gathered up all the germs in the air and hogged them for herself, since she was now sick instead.

Riley had leftover Popeyes chicken from the night before; so Athennia and I headed over to Wawa and grabbed an easy dinner there.

Then we relaxed the rest of the night since it would be back to work in the morning.

All in all though? It was a pretty nice five-day weekend, and whatever dinky little strain of the flu we picked up was decidedly pretty wimpy...

A complete joke, really!

Let's hope Riley knocks it out as quickly as we did :)