Is there anything more annoying than a head cold?  Not bad enough to cause you to stay home, no fever, nothing except (in my case) REALLY loud sneezing and blowing of the nose.  And sniffing.  Lots and lots of sniffing.

I’ve seen other adults with colds, especially women and somehow they don’t look like W.C. Fields donated his nose to them.  The constant blowing ends up turning the bottom of my nose and the top of my lip red and crusty.  It’s so attractive.  I’ve tried to use those tissues with the “lotion” in them, but let’s be honest.  Doesn’t it feel like you didn’t get everything?  Yeah, I thought so too.

There’s nothing like sitting in front of a class at the piano attempting to sing when you feel the sneeze coming.  You think, I just need to get through this next phrase.  You wiggle your nose as you sing, trying to get it to stop and then AAACHOOO.  If I’m lucky, I can continue to play, but that means the germs just flew everywhere.  Oh well – sorry kids.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I had one of those lovely little dainty sneezes.  Oh no, I sneeze like by dad, a huge build up and then all the power in my body comes out the nose.  It’s a little scary. My colleagues don’t want to be anywhere near me.  Seriously.  I have colleagues on my team who back away when they see me coming.  I don’t blame them, I would back away from me too if I could.

Why not take cold meds, you ask?  Well, I try but I have to be careful.  I want to take enough to have some affect without them knocking me out for nap time on my desk.  It’s hard enough to focus with the cold, but add the grogginess that comes with the meds (even the “non drowsy” kind) and, well, I’ll have to ask the kids next week what we did in class this week.  I find myself looking at the clock thinking “four more classes and I can go home and take a nap” or “30 more minutes and another one is finished”.  I’m really trying to make the classes meaningful but today, I know I was supposed to be telling a story about Chopin but it didn’t seem coherent to me, so I’m not sure what the kids got out of it.  The slight tilting of their heads was probably a clue.

The good thing and bad thing about a cold is that you know about how long it will last.  At the beginning it seems like an eternity because you know it’s going to be about a week.  And at the end of the week, you think, well, that wasn’t so bad.  At least I wasn’t having to run to the bathroom all the time or something equally as attractive.  I’m into day three now and thinking, hopefully by the end of the week I won’t have to blow quite as often.  But in the meantime, I’ll stock the tissue next to the piano, keep drinking the water, tough it out and keep trying to cover up the crusty nose.