Mouth Breather

Yes I am one. I breathe through my mouth---which in turn causes all sorts of lovely side effects, such as DROOLING while I sleep. Oh, and don’t forget the snoring.

BUT, who KNEW that mouth breathing really was not so. It is just breathing with your mouth open and using your mouth and nose, in tandem, to breathe. I always assumed I just breathed through my mouth exclusively.

No, people, I do not. Except for today. Today I am breathing exclusively from my mouth and I am NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT.

I am sick. I have a cold. I want to go home and wrap up in a blanket and STARE into space with NOTHING to do, nowhere to go, and nobody to please.

I assumed that my day to day mouth breathing was a result of my copious allergies. While this may be true, I’ve learned that it is near MISERY to be so stuffy that not one single stream of air passes through your nose. I’ve also learned, that despite my allergies, I apparently do use my nose to breathe on a regular basis, and now that this ability is GONE…..SEEMINGLY FOREVER……I am truly dying.

I am a lovely picture today with my mouth gaping open, GASPING for air, my nose squeaking when I TRY to force air through it, or blow snot OUT of it…….my eyes are all red and squinty and I can’t focus. I CAN’T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING relevant or important. Like work. Or my kids. Or ANYTHING but breathing THROUGH MY MOUTH.


Another horrifying side effect of exclusive mouth breathing? Yeah….you can’t TASTE anything. Not even my coffee. Or wonderful pilsbury-from-a-roll peanut butter cookies that I love so much—that my hubby made me last night since I was sick.

Oh, and I have a sore throat. It switches sides daily. Today it’s the right side. Yesterday it was the left. Oh and that’s another odd health anomaly. My right tonsil has collapsed into itself. My left tonsil is HUGE (on a regular basis, not just from being sick). So how in the WORLD am I to look in my throat to see if anything is amiss? IT’S ALREADY AMISS.

I don’t see any white infection spots, so I guess for now, I’ll live. Live in misery. I’m not running a fever but the least little bit of work WEARS ME OUT. Like fixing dinner last night. I got a burst of energy and decided to quit being a whiny brat and cook something. Well, I cooked gnocchi. It was packaged gnocchi, but gnocchi just the same. I’ve never had gnocchi, except one time, when it was AWESOME.

I used the asian chili butter sauce that I learned from the dumpling recipe from last week? Remember? The one whose sauce I adored? I adapted the sauce just a tad and added some diced tomato to sort of cut that butter richness and served it over the gnocchi with cooked shrimp thrown in.

Gnocchi is mushy. The gnocchi I had at BRAVO! was toasty and nutty and firm. I tried to fry these little nuggets and they got a tiny bit brown, but no toasty and nutty. They stuck to the pan, too.

The sauce was good, the shrimp was good, but the gnocchi? Not so much. It was okay, but not awesome like I’d envisioned it. It was right after the gnocchi that I lost my ability to breathe properly and to taste……..thus losing out on the peanut butter cookie goodness from Mr. Perfectly.

After my burst of cooking, I was done. Spent. FOR. THE NIGHT. I watched American Idol, and my beloved Rose get the boot and went to bed a little after 8 pm. This was good, because the night before, I was in bed by 7:30 pm.

Work is a bugger and there’s this sort of expectation that we put on our big girl panties and show up regardless of the CRISIS DU JOUR. So, I’ve felt like I have to be here. I was out on Monday---and whooooo boy—had I known I’d get WORSE, I’d have put my big girl panties on THEN and wussed out today. Because that’s how I roll. I’m a big ole wuss. I don’t like to be sick, I don’t like to feel bad and I want the WORLD to baby me and take care of me.

Somehow the world isn’t terribly compliant with my wishes. And despite the perception of needing to be at work, there are also the fiery looks from my co-workers mad that I’m snotting and snuffling around the office, potentially exposing them to the plague.

I try to be polite, but the crap isn’t moving one way or another. I try to blow, and it just squeaks and makes all sorts of trombone-ish noises. I try to sniff…..SAME RESULT!!!!!! I make a lovely representative of our state when I answer phone calls (‘blah blah blah, dis is Shelly, cand I hep you?????) Real attractive. One of our regular guys called in this morning and commented on my plugged up-ness. GREAT.

So, Internet, will you take care of me? Baby Me? Make the bad stuff all go away?
Try for me, will ya? Bring on the funny! Tell me stories---make me LAUGH. Something to detract from this freaking COLD!!!

Toodles for now!!