I Hate Having a Cold, and yes, I am whine-y

Post # 212     Ugh! I hate having a cold. Like anyone LIKES having a cold.  I've had many cases of bronchitis and 2 bouts with pneumonia in the past, and colds and URI's just make my lungs hurt. I have pretty much been in bed since I came home from taking care of Taylor on Friday.  I won't get to go take care of her tomorrow.  I never see that little stinker on Sat., Sun or Mon and I sure do miss her and now I am too sick to go tomorrow.  I have coughed till my chest is killing me and I don't have the energy to move off the couch..  Hopefully one more day of rest and lots  of orange juice  and I will feel better.  Both my daughters came over and spent a good part of the day with me. They fixed lunch for me, kept me supplied with water and juice, went to the library and got more books for me,  got me a coke, hung out with me.  I just sneezed, coughed, moaned, groaned and slept.  My oldest son offered to bring me dayquill or whatever tonight.  I never take anything for a cold.  Most cold remedy things say do not take if you take thyroid medications.  Some things make me have an asthma attack.  Some things dry my sinuses up so much it makes me more miserable than before. What I should have done is stopped at the store on the way home Friday and gotten zicam when I first thought I was getting sick but by the time my daughter-in-law got home I was feeling so bad and so ready to get home and get in bed I didn't think of it. I think it really helps if you take it at the first sign of a cold. Today I got to talk to my grandsons on the phone.  I will be glad when Taylor is big enough to talk to on the phone. We all watched over Max.  He is still not acting like he feels well either.   All in all, it was a nice day, considering I just feel drained of anything that could be called energy.    I have to get better pretty quickly... not only do I need to take care of Taylor but my grandsons get to come spend Saturday night with me so I have to clean this house from top to bottom.  It is awful.  I haven't felt like cleaning anything since I ran out of medications in August and fell in the hellish black hole of depression and cried for months. During that time I used my energy to take care of Taylor and then did what I could at home, which was not much. Now that I am on medication again I will get over this cold and hopefully I will have some energy and get things cleaned up.  I want to be able to play games with my grandsons this weekend.  I just have to remember that story "spoons"--- or remember that my therapist used to use a 32 oz Dr Pepper cup for the same example---if you have  this much energy and you use this much on one thing, and this much on something else you only have this much left and it is OK to realize you can't do everything if you just have this much energy...so you pick and choose what you can do and let the rest go.  Depression just takes so much energy in day to day functioning.  People that do not have clinical depression just don't understand the truth behind some days it takes everything you have just to get up and get dressed and then your energy tank is drained.  I think that is why this cold bug has just wiped me out until I can not function, I have so little energy to begin with and fighting a cold is so exhausting.  I would just like to feel loaded with energy for one day and be able to do all the things on my to do list.                                                  I'm watching Diane Sawyer's report on Gabby Giffords. What an amazing woman, an amazing husband she has, and an amazing recovery she has had.  I have heard of music therapy before but did not realize really how it works or how important it is.  It sure played a big part in her recovery.  I can hardly wait to read the book:  Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope by Gabrielle Giffords, her husband Mark Kelly, and Jeffrey Zaslow.

   My daughter brought me 5 or 6 books from the library....mysteries and one that I really wanted and she didn't even know.  I had just read about it last week and thought it would be something I would like.  The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly ---  here is the book description from Amazon.com --- "Vibrant, fresh, and intelligent, The Little Women Letters explores the imagined lives of Jo March’s descendants—three sisters who are both thoroughly modern and thoroughly March. As uplifting and essential as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Gabrielle Donnelly’s novel will speak to anyone who’s ever fought with a sister, fallen in love with a fabulous pair of shoes, or wondered what on earth life had in store for her. With her older sister, Emma, planning a wedding and her younger sister, Sophie, preparing to launch a career on the London stage, Lulu can’t help but feel like the failure of the Atwater family. Lulu loves her sisters dearly and wants nothing but the best for them, but she finds herself stuck in a rut, working dead-end jobs with no romantic prospects in sight. When her mother asks her to find a cache of old family recipes in the attic of her childhood home, Lulu stumbles across a collection of letters written by her great-great-grandmother Josephine March. In her letters, Jo writes in detail about every aspect of her life: her older sister, Meg’s, new home and family; her younger sister Amy’s many admirers; Beth’s illness and the family’s shared grief over losing her too soon; and the butterflies she feels when she meets a handsome young German. As Lulu delves deeper into the lives and secrets of the March sisters, she finds solace and guidance, but can the words of her great-great-grandmother help Lulu find a place for herself in a world so different from the one Jo knew? Some things, of course, remain unchanged: the stories and jokes that form a family’s history, the laughter over tea in the afternoon, the desire to do the right thing in spite of obstacles. And above all, of course, the fierce, undying, and often infuriating bond of sisterhood that links the Atwater women every bit as firmly as it did the March sisters all those years ago. Both a loving tribute to Little Women and a wonderful contemporary family story, The Little Women Letters is a heartwarming, funny, and wise novel for today."  Have you read this book and what did you think?  Did you read Little Women?  Little Women has been made into a movie at least four times, once with Kathryn Hepburn in 1933, June Allyson in 1949, next with Meredith Baxter Birney in 1979, and then with Wynona Ryder in 1994...which is your favorite version?