OW! MMM.

So a funny/crazy/weird thing happened to me yesterday. I felt an enormous sneeze coming on-- only one of many, mind you-- so I walked over to the table to be near Fred, my frie(n)d the Kleenex box, who was sitting on the table.

I sneezed a huge KA-CHOO! which bent me over double, and on the way down, with all the force of that sneeze, I hit my head on a chair!

It was a wooden dining room chair. With a nice, upright piece like a one-inch dowel rod. I think I hit it good and square.

And it HURT! It raised a goose egg--well, maybe more of a banty egg-- decorated with a beautiful red spot, surrounded with pale blue. And it hurts.

Today it looks a little smaller, but it hurts worse. Any expression on my face that requires moving facial muscles causes it to hurt. How weird is that?

However, I do have some good news.

You may remember that I was on a quest to discover drinkable wine not long ago. When this mondo cold hit (I think "mondo" is one of my new favorite words, and I don't even know where it came from. mondo, adj. large, gi-normous, unbelievably big. See also humongous)-- anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah. When this cold hit, it hit everyone in the family. Yesterday we all sat around looking like zombies, and when meal time came around we had an interesting dilemma, trying to figure out who felt the least bad and had enough energy to put a little food on the table for everyone else.

That's still not where I was going.

Oh yeah. This weekend we took a browse through the liquor aisle at Walmart, to see if anything looked medicinal. And this is what we found:



It tastes just like the cold and flu drops we usually buy:



Except one ounce (29.57 ml) of Alpha CF cost $5.99 plus shipping, and 750 ml of vodka cost $8-something plus tax.

So, I've been taking the vodka like we're supposed to take the drops: under the tongue.

(I've been doing one teaspoon of vodka, as opposed to 15 drops of cold and flu stuff, which I think is a much bigger dose, actually, but I figure most people are drinking vodka by the shot, or something, and this is still less than that, and 15 drops equals just under a ml and one teaspoon equals 5 ml, and none of this makes sense, so what the heck.)

And it feels the same too. We can always tell when someone has just taken a dose of cold&flu drops, because they're usually jumping up and down with their mouth clamped shut making odd grunting noises. The vodka does the same thing, but it burns a little worse, so I swallow it faster. It sorta takes your breath away otherwise.

Vodka makes great medicine. It seems to help. It worked great for my sore throat, and seemed to help me sleep.

But I can't figure out-- even after trying it in orange juice-- why anyone would drink it just for fun.