I’ve got a cold. Had it for a few days, and so far it seems like the usual fare, but since there’s a really nasty, long-lasting bug going around that has been blossoming into pneumonia and putting people in the hospital, I’m not taking this thing lightly. Bed rest for me, lots of bed rest, and fluids, lots of fluids. I’ve been slamming glassfuls of warm water, often mixed with lime concentrate and a couple tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar.
Now, the thing about having a cold is that, as soon as you publicize your condition on Facebook, everybody responds with advice. It’s a compulsion no one can resist. Your dead Great Aunt Agnes will resurrect long enough to post her sovereign home cold remedy featuring Bragg’s cider vinegar, anchovies, garlic cloves, and eye of newt. And this is not a bad thing. It’s good to know that people care, especially when you live alone, and many of the remedies, from eucalyptus oil to fire cider, have merit. Better than just mindlessly doping oneself with cold meds.
So yesterday I went out and bought a few cold remedies, both traditional and non-traditional. In the mix was fresh horseradish.
I loooove horseradish! But I don’t normally eat a heaping spoonful by itself. My experience doing so when I got home was practically revelatory, and at its peak it occurred to me that I had at least momentarily supplied my village with an idiot. WHOOO-wee! The stuff is supposed to clear out your sinuses. That it does, most efficiently, but what they don’t tell you is that it accomplishes this by first scouring your paranasal cavities with a wire brush, then purifying them with a blowtorch and ripping them out by the roots.
Right now I could use a dose of horseradish. Living in Michigan, land of mold and allergies, a person gets used to inhaling through just one nostril at a time as sinal fluids ooze back and forth from one side of the face to the other. Each half of the nose gets its turn, with free breathing on one side and a cork stuck in the other, depending on how your head is tilted. That’s the lifestyle, and I’m used to it. But this cold has got my sinal gunk slopping around like a seiche, and I’m thinking, “More horseradish.”
And then I think again.
Should I? Probably not. Man, that stuff is potent–blow your head clean off. You might as well swallow a lit M-80.
Ah, well. Let’s do this thing. Village, make way for your idiot. . . .