STILL Sick….

and if you have a queasy stomach, you may not want to read this post.

I felt like CRAP yesterday. I wanted to see my two favorite shows last night (NCIS and The Unit) or I would have gone to bed at 7pm instead of 9pm. At any rate, I woke up coughing at 2:30, then again at 3:45. I managed to go back to sleep until 4:30. At 4:30 am, my head was so congested and pounding so hard, I had no choice but to get up.

I make my way to the kitchen and take Entex – a nasal decongestant that I was given during the last bout of this crud in January. I try to lay down on the couch but my head was pounding so hard I couldn’t. I get up, go to turn on the lamp over here by my chair and the bulb blows. Not only does the bulb blow, but damn if it doesn’t flip the breaker in the scary basement. So, hacking cough, the flashlight and I take a trip down and flip the breaker. I’m sure a few choice words were released on the way down and back up, but honestly my head was hurting so bad I can’t remember for certain.

By six, my head was better, but now all this congestion in my nose and head is running down the back of my throat. I have a VERY easy gag reflex on a good day. I’d taken my regular, every day meds at my normal, six in the morning time and got myself a cup of coffee. At 6:05 or so, I turn on Fox News, start to cough and oh boy, let the games begin…

I run to the bathroom, throw open the toilet and toss up my meds, the water I took them with, the sip of coffee I’d had and lots of gross congestion I’m guessing. I’d try to swallow, get this tickle in the back of my throat and heave again. I had the dry heaves so bad, I thought I was going to bust blood vessels in my eyes.

I come back and sit down in my trusty chair. I think, ok, if I can drink a sip of coffee and get rid of that tickle thing, I’ll be ok. BAD idea. Back to the bathroom….

I think I have it all under control by 6:20, so I try taking my regular meds again and get a cough drop for good measure. Five minutes later I’m back in the bathroom throwing up water, my meds and cough drop…after having almost choked on said cough drop…

By this time, it’s 6:35, I’m heaving so hard that not only am I sure I’ll pop blood vessels in my eyes, I can’t catch my breath in between heaves they are lasting so long.

In the many years husband and I have been married, this morning was the first morning I seriously considered calling husband at work and asking him to come home. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop hanging my head over the toilet long enough to get daughter breakfast and to school. Hell, at that point, I wasn’t sure I could talk to husband if I could get him on the phone…that’s how bad it was.

Thankfully, by seven, I’d managed to get some coffee down to get that tickle in my throat and chest under control and the dry heaves stopped.

The day was pretty uneventful compared to the way the morning started. Little guy felt bad enough to nap this morning from 8:45 until almost 11. He’s started that barking cough thing. We go get daughter from school this afternoon and I guess he and I both got too hot in the truck. We all get out and he and I both start coughing and trying to throw up in the front yard. My GOSH!!! So, that was it. I called my doc. He wasn’t there the first time, but I called him back an hour later and he answered. We’ll see him tomorrow morning thank goodness. I was trying to wait until next week since it would be the time for my normal doc visit, but trying to puke in my front yard dashed that hope. We’re going in tomorrow and hopefully an antibiotic for me and some steroids for little guy will fix us both up.

I’m not ready for the heat of summer, but I’m so sick of being sick, I’ll take it just so we can stop getting sick every month as we seem to do during the winters here.

Sheesh, what a day.

A Few Quick Updates…

I believe when we last left off in the Cold and Flu-Fest of 2006 we were all on the mend.

Well, that didn’t last long.

Daughter was diagnosed with Strep Throat in the beginning of April. Husband then caught the cough part of daughter’s latest bout of sickness. Around the 11th, the cough got a hold of me and is still refusing to let go. Last weekend I started losing my voice and I’m still really hoarse. The chest and nasal congestion is driving me nuts. Ughh.

Last weekend, despite neither one of us feeling great, we worked on the yard. I sprayed the grass down with weed killer. The Dandelions were trying to take over. We took trips to Walmart, Lowes and Home Depot and bought flowers. Daughter and I planted these pretty cascading flowers in the planters by the front porch’s steps. We put our ferns on each side by the front door and hung up the hanging baskets that are just FULL of dark purple colored petunias. It’s really starting to look a lot like spring around here.

I had several things I wanted to do this week in the house, but I’ve felt like crap all week and ended up doing nothing more than lots of coughing. I was suppose to go buy groceries today, but decided to spend another day coughing in the privacy of my own home. I have to get out tomorrow (Friday) regardless, so I rationalized staying home today by convincing myself that since I HAD to get out tomorrow, I could buy groceries then.

Tomorrow I take little guy to register for Kindergarten for the 2006/07 school year. I cannot believe he’s already old enough to start getting ready for school. He sure is excited, so I’m looking forward to watching his reaction to everything…

This weekend, we’re planning on laying low. Try to nap a lot, drink lots of fluids, eat some good food and then nap some more. Hopefully, now that it is warmed up, if we get a lot of rest, we’ll finally kick this stuff for good.

New Jeep Wrangler Unveiled!

I’ve been waiting on the New York Auto Show since January to see the new four-door Jeep Wrangler unveiled and I just have to say…it was WELL WORTH THE WAIT!

For some great photos, check out Autoweek.com and click through all the pics.

Car and Driver also has a bit of coverage.

The new Wrangler is set to hit dealerships this fall. I’ll be there – and for the record, I’ll be looking for a black one .

Learning from the French

I stopped by Michelle Malkin’s blog this evening and found an article linked from Allahpundit’s entry NIGHT FEVER

Though written four years ago, Theodore Dalrymple’s essay “The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris” remains the most harrowing treatment of France’s banlieues I’ve ever read.

The fact that things have only gotten considerably worse in France since this article was written, several points he makes seems to speak volumes to our current immigration problems – if only our politicians would listen.

Now, we have a HUGE illegal immigration problem that is quite different than France’s situation. Their immigrants were invited. However, the “guest worker” nonsense and giving citizenship to those who have broken our nation’s laws by sneaking across the border illegally does apply. In a different way perhaps, when you boil away the political spin, if these laws pass, they will essentially be invited.

But what is the problem to which these housing projects, known as cités, are the solution, conceived by serene and lucid minds like Le Corbusier’s? It is the problem of providing an Habitation de Loyer Modéré—a House at Moderate Rent, shortened to HLM—for the workers, largely immigrant, whom the factories needed during France’s great industrial expansion from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the unemployment rate was 2 percent and cheap labor was much in demand. By the late eighties, however, the demand had evaporated, but the people whose labor had satisfied it had not; and together with their descendants and a constant influx of new hopefuls, they made the provision of cheap housing more necessary than ever.

Cheap labor that was in much demand…

Sound familiar?

The article is extremely long, but I found it similar to driving by a car accident. Horrified as I was while reading about the impotence of the police, the crimes (and weapons the criminals have) and the attitude of this French underclass, I just couldn’t seem to look away and stop reading.

Some four years later and things have only deteriorated further. As France tries to wake up and pass laws that would actually help the very people who are protesting find jobs, they are so ignorant, they don’t even realize it.

In 1986, Reagan passed an amnesty to “fix” our immigration problems. Instead, it sent immigration numbers soaring.

Pete Nunez, the former U.S. attorney for San Diego and a lifelong fighter for immigration control, told me in a recent talk: “Why are those numbers today so high? Because of the amnesty of 1986! Those 2.7 million illegals amnestied were then able, in the decade of the ’90s, to sponsor their family members. That decade turned out to have the highest number of legal immigrants practically in our history, because of the amnesty.”

Here at the busy port of entry, in my long conversations with officials of the Department of Homeland Security, which encompasses immigration, border patrol and customs, there is unanimous agreement with this interpretation.

“The ‘86 experience definitely led to family reunification,” Lauren Mack, customs and border protection public affairs officer, agreed. “We watched that amnesty — it only created more fraud and more problems.”

[....]

The 1986 amnesty was not to be the first of many amnesties, nor a kind of experimental plug in the flow of human beings from a poor country to a rich one. To the contrary, it was to be the “last amnesty.” Pushed by liberals in Congress like Teddy Kennedy, it was supposed to settle and legalize the illegals already in the United States, while controlling future immigration. It was to be the solution.

Instead, those 2.7 million settled in America and, under the dominating “family reunification” policy, were able immediately to sponsor almost any number of relatives, some bringing in 80 or 90 persons. And because the enforcement aspects of the law were never put into practice, the 1986 amnesty left the gate open to still more massive numbers. Meanwhile, the proposed new guest worker programs before Congress almost all provide for some kind of amnesty that will lead only to a repeat of 1986.

If we won’t learn from France’s history, can we at the very least, look back and learn from our own?

What happens in twenty years when, due to how quickly technology is improving and expanding there are too few low-wage jobs for our “guest workers” to fill? Instead of cheap workers, machines (or even robots) with hi-tech computers do many of these jobs. With the spike in unemployment, do we then increase our public housing to house these displaced “guest workers”? Do we pay to educate them so they are qualified for higher paying jobs (jobs that hard working Americans DO want and need)? Do we first have to pay to teach them our language so they can understand when they attend school? Are we also paying to feed these unemployed “guest workers” and their families? Are we offering unemployment benefits to them? Health benefits? And how do we pay for all this (yeah, I know, higher and higher taxes along with increases in the costs of health care et al)? Not to forget – the baby boomers will be well into their Social Security benefits that will be bankrupt by then…

Our economic future sure looks a bit scary…

If we ever learn anything from the French (of all people), if we ever bother to look back and learn anything from our OWN history…NOW is the time!

Color Change…

The yellow links on this template bothered me. They sort of matched, but they also sort of stuck out like a sore thumb too.

I decided to try a more subdued color. Hopefully, the links’ new color is still easy to distinguish from the rest of the text, instead of being so bright you need sunglasses .