Every flipping year. It’s the same. Just when I think I’ve avoided getting the back-to-school lurgy, I succumb. Wouldn’t it be good if the frequency of snot-storms reduced as you got older? A tiny bit of compensation maybe.
This year’s version has been particularly horrible – snotty and bad-tempered. And far worse, of course, than anyone else’s version of the same. Now I’m in the totally bored of this, I need to be getting back to normal phase.
It’s odd though, every time that I get reminded that I can’t change things by willpower alone, it unsettles me a bit. My default position is that of course, everything will be hunky-dory because that’s what I’ve decided is going to happen. While this works with anything on the positive thinking, self-fulfilling side of things, it can’t possibly always work.
It’s not as if the evidence isn’t there all the time. Calories are still calories, despite years of refusal to believe in them, likewise speeding and parking regulations. But when the cold catches me after weeks of denying it, along with the sore nose, I feel the chill wind of mortality and, consequently, one of my cold symptoms is also worry.
Here’s what I’m worrying about today:
- Whether the children are happy.
- Whether husband’s car will survive another year.
- Whether the bill for years of sun worshipping will finally arrive.
- Whether something expensive is lurking, causing us to need to find quick loans.
- Whether I’ll be too busy worrying about small things to notice a big thing.
- Whether it’s too late.
- Whether I should be eating more or less of one thing or another.
- Whether the contents of the recycling bin really do get recycled.
- Whether the children need more or less attention.
- Whether that toffee really did do something to that tooth.
- Whether nuclear war would ever actually happen.
- Whether there’s time to change my mind.
- Whether the roof is finally fixed. We have chosen one of the most trusted roofing companies in Centennial.
- Whether I shouldn’t have died my hair for all those years.
- Whether this cold will ever get better.
- Whether, as I can’t smell anything, I’ll miss something important.
- Whether it’s not, in fact, a cold but something worse.
- Whether it’s hot in here or just me.
- Whether I’m writing an entertaining post or just having a whinge.
- Whether I can get away with a joke about how nasal gazing is what you do after a big sneeze when you need to make sure a nasty lump of snot didn’t land on your shirt.