Valiant, Brave Trish

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. - Mark Twain

Ah, the flu. I only had one dance this year with the plague and it was all...um, below. That was after Brother had the two-way flu. For me, it only lasted for about 12 hours, but food was so unappetizing after that, it was a few days before I actually started eating solid food again...and it was Guinness, unholy stout of ubiquity. Blech. I've have apparently depleted the Chippewa Valley of all Beamish, and there's really not a lot around to begin with. Oh yeah, I forgot about my first Sonic burger. That was my second round of solid food, post-pipe cleaning.

I haven't had the flu for years and I avoid the shot. For some reason, I thought I had read somewhere that you should really only get the flu shot if you are elderly, very young or have a compromised immune system, which doesn't sound right. Whatever. No flu shot for me.

By comparison, it seems to me that Trish and her family are sick constantly. It took my mom to point out that two little boys and two school teachers make for a fluish window of opportunity for exposure.

A few days ago, I start receiving a stream of text messages on my cell from Trish. Does she abbreviate? No. Is she laconic? No. I get a blog post's worth of feverish outpouring from the wordy one. Blah blah blah, "I'm dying." Schmala schmal, "Everyone's barfing." Yadda yadda, "What does a spleen look like? Is this my spleen?" Jeez.

If you read Trish's last post, I'm sure you imagine a svelte, young mother in designer shoes, standing on a thoroughly defeated, giant microbe, with her hair, cape, and Chanel Tyvek suit blowing in the wind, her jaw set with determination under her bio hazard mask, and wielding a bucket and hand sanitizer.

Sure, so did I. Until the flood of text messages was finally punctuated with this (no, I didn't rotate this picture):

"That's a valiant flea that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion." So says old Billy Shakespeare. Oops, no that's not a flea on that lip. Ugh...breakfast...eggs...uuurrp. Ack. Excuse me...gotta run.