1 post tagged “new york”

What's your favorite thing about being sick?

This is not a funny question for me today.

I haven't written a post on this blog for simply ages (did you notice?), and thought I would ease myself back in with a Question Of The Day. Covering more than a month of absence would an excruciatingly long post make. Much better to be targeted. Imagine my horror when I saw said question. For I am sick! And there is nothing favourite (favoUrite, thank you, Americans) about it! Surely it should read "what's your favourite thing about pretending to be sick?" or "what's your favourite thing about convincing yourself you are sick and taking a glorious day off when you're actually fine?"

I'll tell you what are not my favourite things (plural) about being sick.

Stepping out of a horse and carriage ride in Central Park (didn't quite meet my Sex and the City-fuelled dreams, if the truth be known*), nearly keeling over and wondering why, given the ride was so slow we almost rolled backwards into the Apple Store across the road, do I feel so dizzy? That is not my favourite thing about being (becoming) sick.

Spending the last afternoon of my holiday in New York in bed, with a hoody on over my pyjamas, my head under the covers and my feet bound in a pashmina, trying to beat the freezing shaky-shakes and wondering whether it was such a good idea not to wear a jumper when freezing to death on the Brooklyn Bridge that morning, is not my favourite thing about being sick.

Nor is taking half an hour to wobble ten blocks or so, as if I'd been bedbound for a decade and forgotten how to walk, to a lovely diner, only to eat two spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup and drink a hot toddy with my hands over my ears to muffle the hideous sound of people- imagine this, on a saturday night- talking and laughing, in an attempt at a celebratory last-night-of-trip meal. I can't imagine that this was my boyfriend's favourite thing about it either, as he manfully tried to haz cheezburger and enjoy a beer as I croaked pitifully "I can't, I can't manage another spoonful, arrrr, why is everyone talking so loudly, arrrr, a taxi just drove past the window and blinded me with its devil headlights, ohhh, I can't drink this hot toddy I will get a hangover on top of all the toooortuuure".

Sitting on a plane for twelve hundred hours with my throat filled with shards of glass and my head stuck between some railings (it felt like), this is not my favourite thing;  only managing  a quarter of the obligatory first-night-home takeaway, that is not my favourite thing; phoning into work to announce that after my seven days of leave, I'm now going to take a sick day, thank you very much; knowing that there are snacks in the house and not feeling like eating them; knowing that Come Dine With Me is on and not feeling like watching it; being in my cosy living room instead of toiling underneath a gigantic air con pipe, and feeling altogether meh about it. All of these things are not favourites of mine.

Being an ungrateful cow who should be writing about the fabulous holiday she just spent in New York last week- which right up until the last hours of the last day, was brilliant- instead of whining about her minor viral throat infection. Apparently that's my favourite thing right now.

No wait.

Complaining!

That's my favourite thing about being sick.

*The Magnolia Bakery, on the other hand, did meet my SATC dreams. A collection of photographs of me with my greedy snout buried in various cupcakes reveal that indeed, I have never been happier than when at the Magnolia bakery, or specifically, immediately afterwards once the box of cakes was open.