BWE 6: A time to kill

Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) posts are a summary of the previous week.

I may kill my dogs. Life would be so much easier, and I could rock a fierce Rottweiler murse.

But alas, that’s probably illegal. Wait, is it? I need to do some research…

The overarching theme of the past week has been my illness, which I blame on my dogs. What follows is the 5 step process of how my dogs blemished my week, and my face…and why I’m going to kill them for their fur:

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Step 1: Harley gets sick.

I wake up because I sense my dog staring at me from the foot of my bed like a zombie in a horror movie. Then we have the following exchange:

Me: “Ugh. Sleep. I need it. What?”
Harley: “Deal or no deal?”
Me: “What?”
Harley: “I got the shits. I can go right here on this rug, or you can get your ass up and take me out RIGHT NOW. Deal or no deal?”
Me: “I hate you.”

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Step 2: Exhaustion

Harley wakes me up every few hours to be let out. Gertrude, the Rottweiler, comes along. By the time I take them out, pick up the nast, and get them settled back down, I’ve lost a half hour.

So the next day in class, I’m as irritated and exhausted as my classmates with newborns at home. I’m unproductive, stressy, and everything takes way too much time to get done because I’m half-awake.

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Step 3: I get sick

After a few days of being woken up by Harley’s emergencies, and getting stressed by my lack of productivity, I’m sick. Or rather, severely congested.

And it’s not a real sickness. This is one of those stupid, “your immune system is suppressed because of stress and lack of sleep and now you get to suffer” situations.

I feel like someone just stabbed me with a botox pen. But instead of getting a glossy face, I just have pathetic look of defeat and the need to blow my nose every few minutes. Fail.

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Step 4: Harley is better, but now Gertrude is sick.

I get one full night of sleep and then the Rottweiler gets sick. I think she’s copying Harley for attention. Lack of sleep ensues due to more night time dog-diarrhea messitude…

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Step 5: layer in class, court appearances, and dating

After high school no one ever believes you are sick. You can call in sick and cancel things, and people respect this out of some sense of professionalism…but no one really believes it.

It’s even worse when it’s not a dramatic illness but severe congestion. I was not contagious, but there was still an amazing amount of pain and sense that I was starring as the “before” person in an allergy commercial without the benefit of the Claritin Clearness afterwards.

So I got to be awkward congested guy in court, class, and on dates.
And just as the congestion subsides, I sprout a big, fat, juicy cold sore while at work on Saturday.
I’ve had cold sores since I was a little kid. I get cold sores after being sick, stressed, or exposed to citrus. They are gross and unsightly, but some people have real problems, and a 3-day blemish doesn’t count.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going strut into the clubhouse with a juicy sore on my lip. So Saturday night I stayed in, despite everyone wanting to hang out. Even my most antisocial friends were out on Saturday, but I wasn’t budging.

I coyly declined invitations, but for those who pressed on I had to engage in the overshare: “I HAVE A BIG FAT JUICY SORE ON MY LIP? YOU WANNA HANG? HMMMM? HMM? COOOTIES!!”

And surprise, surprise, that worked!

I’ve been rocking my $20 bottle of Abreva all day, but I think I’m still going to be pretty gross for tomorrow’s classes. I would just skip and heal at home, but again, my professors are not going to believe that I’m sick, and probably wouldn’t consider a disfigurement a good reason to miss class.

So I’m stuck. I blame the dogs, who will be slaughtered and used to make my new dog-leather Lady Gaga inspired face mask to cover my sore.