'cause you give me something...'

i would like to take this opportunity to thank the five year old girl with the perpetually runny nose for the sore throat, headache and aching ears i developed last night at exactly 8:45 p.m.

thank you.

it was a pleasure to be paired up with you at the preschool field trip yesterday afternoon. why i was given the honor and not your own mother, who had also tagged along, griped at you a lot and is seemingly aware of your snot problem, is nothing short of bizarre, but who am i to argue with a preschool teacher who deals with all of you four afternoons a week and who set the agenda for the day?

i'll tell you who. someone not worthy of raising the question, that's who.

so i made the best of it. trying to guide you by the shoulder or with a gentle hand on your back as we mazed our way through the gymnasium and carnival games. we did our best to avoid skin on skin contact, but as fate would have it, our hands eventually met like star crossed lovers. like the penultimate moment in a movie love story when the scene slows down, the music swells and the close up tightens in on our fingers entwining.

had our scene played out that way, the camera would have then cut immediately to a tight frame on my face, complete with a look of dismay when i realized what had happened. it would have been followed by the silent look of dread and my mouth slowing forming the words "ooooooohhhhh nooooooooo......," my head shaking like a wet dog, when i glanced down at you and noticed your other hand was stuffed down the back of your pretty white tights and you were entertaining your right butt cheek.

and you grinned. a smile that is just as perpetual as your flowing nostrils. then you dove down those tights deeper. and i swear that, as i tried to shake our icy death grip apart and suggested you save your extracurricular pantie activities for another place, that your smile turned just a little bit evil.

cripes. who wouldn't be charmed? whose to say that in the privacy of my own home, i wouldn't be doing the very same thing you were?

so thank you, perpetual snotty nose girl with no sense of personal discretion. it had to be you. no amount of elementary school bathroom soap and purell was going to save me. and this little spring cold is kicking my ass.

an ass upon which i am not entertaining.

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if i survive this cold, and granted, all signs seem to indicate i will (i heard that big, collective sigh you all let out across a large portion of the midwest and a sprinkling on either coast. you all are so sweet to care like that!), then i will be hitting my 100th post the first time i enter something here next week. somehow i eeked out four posts (really 10 if you take into account monday's lengthy biography) this week, and so i'm pretty sure you've all had about your fill of me, but if you have thoughts or suggestions for the 100th, let me know. i'll stew over them and decide.

or i'll just keep babbling away as i've done so expertly, toss in a couple rack remarks here and there, and win you over with my charm. eventually, you will be mine!

but not before i take some dayquil and go lay down for a bit.