The art of running on empty.

I've forgotten how to sleep. It's become one of my lesser known past-times. Yes, sleeping has been demoted to merely a past-time, apart from necessity. Like needlecraft, or collecting bottlecaps. Today, I was walking under the Sun to try and absorb some of that good 'ol vitamin D, but mostly because I was a cold and tired mess -- and as the rays blinded my vision, causing me to squint, I felt that I could fall asleep while walking.

I have a cold. I really detest colds because I'm always so upset at myself when I get them, as though I've lost some sort of competitive battle with an unknown force whom we will name "Rhino." For 2 years I had been the victor in this chair-gripping battle, but alas, I had let my guard down, and in my sleeplessness, Rhino had conquered my sinuses and battered the walls of my throat. He has subjected me to mountains of phlegm-covered kleenex, awkward social situations, and clammy isolation. I shake my fists up in the air and hoarsely yell, "I'll get you next time." Then another, for dramatic emphasis, "I'll...get you next time..." Truthfully I don't know what to do with myself when I get a cold. Do I feel sorry for myself or do I simply push my body to do what it would normally do when it was healthy? I usually forsake the two and drown myself in vitamin C and water. My grandmother used to force me to run up hills, coughing and sweating and feeling like manure, I would finish, and she would tell me to take a hot shower. This method I will call the "WHATAREYOU,CRAZY?!" method, and according to my grams, it supposedly helps you "sweat out" the virus.

I wouldn't call modern medicine more effective, but perhaps it's just lazy. People used to be so creative before pill-popping. My mother has a different approach when I am sick. She gets angry at me and wears a SARS mask around the house. This, coupled with "穿暖 一點!" She is less of a physical tormentor, like her own mother, but she tends to formulate odd concoctions for me to put through my body. Things such as radish and ginger smoothies, papaya, dirt, and seaweed soup, or bitter melon, cucumber, and barley juice. My mother probably believes that when one is sick, they obviously just forgot that they were supposed to eat all the most disgusting food combinations on the planet and so have to make up for it in the span of one week. That's only a hypothesis though.

I'm off to find an orange.