First Cold of the Season

Fall pleasures have been severely diluted by my first cold of the fall-winter season. GRRRR.

A week ago I started thinking I had a mild cold, and it grew more obvious in a couple of days. During the day, things weren’t so unpleasant. There was little runny nose with this cold. No fever. Then the coughing became extreme at night, and I had no left-over cough medicine from last year.

I figured the whole thing would be over by now—aren’t colds supposed to run their main course in a week? Or did I make that up? But, man, by the weekend, I felt bad. I would wake in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep because of coughing. I had not replenished my cough drop supply yet this fall either, and I was getting nervous I might run out of those. My sides would be sore from the coughing.

The next day things would seem better, and I figured I was on my way to recovery—only that night to go to bed needing sleep but coughing would make that impossible. I’d leave our bedroom lest I kept Gerald awake. (Going to bed at l0 p.m. was a definite sign of how bad I felt. I usually blog or play on the Internet until midnight and then go to bed.) I’d grab a blanket from the closet and transfer to the living room couch where I could sit up when I needed to cough. By this time, Gerald had taken me to the drug store and I was taking cough medicine as well as sucking on a new supply of cough drops.

During the days, my thoughts have been hazy, my energy level very low, and my ambition to do more than absolutely necessary non-existent. I’ve made the bed, put simple unappetizing meals on the table, tried to keep up with the laundry, finished re-reading The Tipping Point, and not much else. I had forgotten most of what I had read in that book and wanted to refresh its content in my mind. It would be valuable to think you could know how to start a social epidemic to effect good changes. The book is fascinating, but I have not been able to figure how I could apply Maxwell Gladwell’s ideas. So I guess I will just have to rely on stating my opinions on matters I consider important and hope my opinion influences anyone it is supposed to influence.

Because of my low energy level, I have sat in front of the kitchen television more than usual as I took long lazy breaks from the small amount of kitchen work I have done. (I still have some groceries from last Wednesday’s monthly shopping trip to finish putting away.)

Hearing the Penn State horrors and all the accusations against Herman Cain have made that TV listening unpleasant and mind-boggling. Because I do not want a nine percent national sales tax, I did not have to make up my mind on Cain’s innocence to decide if I would support him. Yet probably like most women, I would not want him even to be a major-party candidate if the four women’s accusations are true. So if she is telling the truth, I greatly admire Sharon Bialek’s courage in coming out publicly to defend and support the other three accusers. She came forth knowing she would be attacked, and any past mistakes will be made public. Most women cannot afford to live through the attacks that come if they publicly announce sexual misconduct.

And other than a desire for notoriety, I don’t see any reason for Bialek to be lying. Yet for many people, a few days of fame is very seductive. I suppose some rich person opposed to Cain might be paying her to make up this story, but I think that while that is not impossible, it is unlikely. Nevertheless, many many people lie for reasons we cannot understand. And I think I know enough of human behavior to know that four women could be lying. Or four men. For a woman to lie about this sort of thing strikes me as a serious offence as what she is accusing Cain of having done. (He did stop and take her back to her hotel as she requested.) To destroy a good man’s reputation is a terrible deed.

Someone has suggested that it would be possible to check with the hotel in question to see if Cain did pay for an upgrade to Bialek’s room. I wonder if hotels do have access to that ancient a record. Or if the restaurant association has such a record that their CEO used funds to do this. A reporter might dig for those facts.

Anyhow I will definitely be listening to Cain’s 5 p.m. news conrference. I hope he tells us he is willing to take a polygraph to help clarify that these four women have lied about his behavior. If he fails the polygraph, I hope he steps out of the political race and resigns as associate pastor of his Atlanta church.

I hate it that the youth of America have to hear about such scandals on the news. They deserve so much better from the nation’s adults.