Good Things About Having A Cold.

While we were on holidays in Florida, I managed to aquire a nasty, rotten cold. I could feel the back of my throat getting all ticklish and raw about 2 days into our week away, and with all the positive thinking possible, I told myself it might be a slight cold and I'd hardly notice it. About two days later, while laying in bed and missing out on all the fun and snorting and spewing and looking as disgusting as a human being should be allowed, I had to acknowledge that this was a yeti of a cold, and I was just going to have to deal.

It's been two weeks now, and I'm just now starting to feel like myself again; this cold has hung around like a fart in a phone booth. I'm still trying to be positive, so I've come up with a list of things that are good about having a cold:

• Nobody expects you to look nice. Forget the makeup and don't bother doing your hair. You are going to look like something the cat sicked up, so you are totally off the hook.
• Lolling in bed watching Dr. Phil and napping is allowed, nay, encouraged. It's the only time you can do so with impunity.
• Chocolate's medicinal properties are highly valued at such a time, and no one is going to begrudge your intake, no matter how alarming.
• You can't smell the garbage can in the kitchen. From the bedroom.
• Since you can't smell, you can't taste. Save the calories from the sugar in your coffee, which has no flavor anyway, and use it for them for the chocolate. At least you can feel the chocolate.
• Pajamas are the attire of choice. No uncomfortable waistbands or gotcha crotches.
• You get to whine loudly and repeatedly, without censure.
• You can take a day off work by insisting you "don't want to spread it around". (Actually, if you had the bubonic plague, you would happily lick a few, selected co-workers precisely with that in mind, but this is only a cold.)

It won't kill you.