What I Would Like to Tell this Cold I Feel Brewing in My Body Like the Perfect Storm

If you're from the Midwest, or have ever lived here for longer than one season, then you'll understand when I refer to the extreme and inconstant weather patterns that often accompany every seasonal transition.

 During this particular time of year, like a shark closing in upon a bloody seal, Fall is fast approaching. My favorite season, I am already shaking out sweaters, awaiting pumpkins and corn mazes, and the days when humidity doesn't drown my will to live...

 But there is a price for this plaid-clad, cider infused, magical time. I'm sneezing at YOU, fall cold. As every spectator who looks upon Courtney Love's red carpet ensemble disasters, but is powerless set them aflame, so too am I unable to stop this bacterial onslaught on my poor, innocent immune system.

 It always starts with a cough. A little back of the throat tickle, if you will. Disguised in its traitorous Trojan horse of friendship, the virus drives into my lungs. The hacking begins. I try to rationalize it away; grind of stuck pepper perhaps? Emphysema? Maybe anthrax? Because let's be real; ANYTHING else would be better than what is about to happen. And anything includes chronic degenerative diseases and airborne pathogens. Because, if you haven't guessed by now, I'm getting a cold.

My wellness tea? Bambi against a legion of rapid, red-eyed wolves. Airborne? Futile, like an attempt to car dance to NPR. Plenty of fluids? Maybe, but I find eight glasses of water burden enough thank you very much. Next? Nose blockage/running. This part of the assault is more powerful than Lindsey Lohan's compulsion to cause hit and runs. And I am afraid.

 As the nose phase hits, just as my voice begins to disappear, I am powerless. I am only able to speak as if I used my throat as a blender for gravel, and envision the hell that awaits me come nightfall. All I can imagine is that moment as I try to sleep and my nose is blocked up by an impenetrable disgusting force that, like this horrific song, refuses to loosen its clammy, chapped grip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0

 This is the ordeal I face. And as I prepare to stare the sleep-depriving, cough-inducing monster in its yellow beady eyes, I have just this to say...to my cold:

 I don't appreciate you. Sure, I might not take a vitamin, but I will not be badgered into taking a horse-pill that has an aftertaste like mud and makes me want to hurl half the time. And I might not get 8 hours a night due to a love of late night info-merrcials, but you can't tell me that I'm the only one who finds them enchanting (I'm looking at you Billy Banks and Richard Simmons; where my boys at?)  The bottom line is, NO cold. You will not control me. You shall not define me. I shall not fear you, shall not fear the terror of the  gag reflex nor the snot that flies by day. And you may take my lung function, my voice, and  the ability to breathe through my nose, but you will never take my hour learning about the benefits of the forearm forklift

or pajama jeans!