I have been a blogger for years now, since the end of 2007 to be exact. So my post topic for this week was perhaps inevitable but it is still pitiable. Yes, I am going to blog about blogging. My life has somehow made a pathetic full circle. Although it has come to this, don’t cry for me Argentina. Let us instead follow the steady decline that led to this sad situation.

Roughly four years ago several of my friends jumped on the blogging bandwagon and started their own blogs. Jason, always the techno geeko, was easily swayed by them to follow this trend too and create his own blogging website. Although everyone was all in a tizzy to divulge the gory details of their mundane lives to the world, I wasn’t so keen on doing the same. What could I possibly want to share with every person on the planet? It took quite a bit of prodding to get me to type my first post but Jason finally convinced me to sit down and do it and that, my friends, was the beginning of the end.

Over the course of the next couple months “Jason’s” website became mine. He posted too erratically and people started complaining about the infrequency of our site’s new content. I was therefore guilted into updating more and more in his behalf and as I did so I found I enjoyed writing and sharing my bias-drenched opinions. Before I knew it I was a regular blogger.

Since I suffer from a condition commonly referred to as pigheadedness, once I am fully committed to something I never look back and my pursuit of posting has been no different. I now write weekly pretty much without fail whether there is something minutely interesting going on in my life or not. I wish I could say the same of all the chums that got me into this mess in the first place. Most of them, after the newness of the fad wore off, grew tired of posting and their blogs have since become the abandoned places of the internet where digital dust collects and words go to die. But feel free to visit their websites if you’d like to read about something super exciting they did 584 days ago. Thanks a lot all you fickle trend fans! Get me onboard and then jump ship why don’t you?

I can’t really complain though. I now have four years of recorded recollections. It’s amazing how much you can forget in just that small span of time. Reading my old posts now and then I find there’s quite a bit that’s happened in my life that would have passed into memory oblivion had I not written about it.

Also, thanks to this website my friends, near and far, are able to catch up on everything that they really aren’t missing in my life. How could they go on living without knowing what new recipe I made for dinner Friday night?

Plus, my blog has proved beneficial in ways I didn’t foresee when I started typing all those years ago. Through it I’ve been able to reach out and give advice to a lot of fine folks with tendon problems like my own. It is quite gratifying to receive so many appreciative comments from the lot of them. I’m glad that my trying experiences have helped others through theirs.

Yes, I’ve got a cozy place in cyberspace and with over 700 monthly visitors to keep me company I’ll probably just keep documenting my small life indefinitely. I know some would say that those who write about what they do spend all their time writing and not doing. While that sounds logical it definitely has not been my experience. I am always busy doing; I do it like you wouldn’t believe. However, with some embarrassment, I have to admit that these days before I even begin an activity I often have a title for the post I will write about it later in my head. That’s when I think briefly that perhaps I’ve been a blogger for a little too long but then the moment passes and my desire to jot down a piece of my life returns.

And so, with this sorry post, I hit a new low and admit publicly that I am a hopeless blogger and I will not be rehabilitated.

Husbands are good for a few things* and getting their wives sick is one of them. A few weeks ago Jason brought home a lovely virus and kindly shared it with me. But not only did that boy give me his germs, he gave them to me just as we were about to leave for Mississippi to visit my grandparents. His perfect timing amazes me. He very rarely gets ill but when he does it’s inevitably right before we are scheduled to go on a trip. How does he do it?

My body is tough and usually does a truly fantastic job of fighting off bugs but because I was wrestling with this infection as I was hopping airplanes and keeping unusual schedules it got a good hold on me. Luckily, while I was at my grandparents’ it was still gathering momentum so I felt relatively decent during our stay. My voice became little more than a squeak as I struggled to speak loudly for the hard of hearing and at night I had a constant itch in my throat that made sleeping a hopeless task but that was the extent of my symptoms until the day we were leaving the South. That’s when our short plane ride made my little menace unmanageable.

Since I was starting to feel congested the day of our return trip, I took some decongestant before we boarded our jet as a precautionary measure. My preventative efforts didn’t prevent much. Our direct flight was only three hours long but it felt never-ending as I was simultaneously plugged up and running everywhere. My sinuses stubbornly refused to respond to the change in air pressure and their unrelieved blockage gave me the strange and uncomfortable sensation that someone was sitting on top of my head. I was not alone in my suffering; practically everyone on the plane seemed to be in no better shape. There were orphaned tissues lying in the isle and many passengers seemed to be undertaking an unspoken coughing competition. There are few things worse than sitting next to someone on a flight that coughs in your face the whole time so I refused to join the ranks of the rude hackers. With some concentrated efforts I stifled all of my coughs and sneezes throughout the ride, which didn’t exactly add to my feelings of wellbeing.

My dignity and politeness lasted through the flight but by the time I got home the snot gates had opened wide. At that point I was beyond completely miserable and I literally had a steady stream of watery mucus shooting out of my nose. I wish I could say that becoming a booger geyser was the low point of my sickness and that things just improved from there but alas, that was not the case. It took two more weeks, and many nights of sporadic sleeping mingled with coughing spells, for me to fully recover.

The moral of this story? Planes and respiratory infections do not go together well and apparently husbands and restful trips don’t either.

By the way, Jason got better just as I was starting to get sick so he was in excellent shape for our trip. Good for him.

*I fully acknowledge that husbands are also good for opening jars, reaching high shelves, killing spiders, fixing computers, tying snowboarding boots, and carrying heavy groceries.