Class with a swollen head

SUMMARY: Well--it only just felt like it.

I've had a cold all week. Entire head has felt like it's full of fluid. Brain doesn't function well like that. Sleeping or at least lying down a lot. Doing completely mindless things and not doing them very well.

Example: Tried to do a quick grocery trip while completely congested and foggy (me, not the traffic or weather). Needed milk, fruit, kleenex (er--facial tissue) since I've emptied 3 boxes this week. Checked for sanitary wipes at the store entrance--container is empty and stuffed with trash. Conscientiously touched everything with my hand in my shirtsleeves instead of my bare hands. Put some frozen foods and fruit into the child seat of the cart. At the self-serve checkout, scanned everything from the child seat and put the bags back into the child seat. The Monitor Person asked, "Do you mind if a put a sticker on your milk so that they don't think you're stealing it?" Milk? Oh, crud, yup, I did put a gallon of milk into the main part of the cart. And I hadn't paid for it. So paid for it, put it back into the main part of the cart. Out to the parking lot, loaded the bags into my car, took the cart to the nearest return point. Got into car. Thinking....thinking... oh, crap, milk. Got out of car, retrieved milk from cart. Home. Sat in car in garage for a few minutes thinking how nice a nap would be right there and now. Thinking maybe back to bed would be good. Realized I hadn't gotten more klee...facial tissue. Had to go back the next day for that.

Anyway. Felt a little better today. Head swimming and thick when I first got up, so took some decongestant. It helped. Still not perfect, but better than yesterday.

So decided to go up to class this evening.

OK, dumb-- a quarter of the way up the mountain, the pressure started building. Halfway up, it was so hard and thick in my head that I pulled over to the side of the road for 5 minutes to see whether it would ease up. Didn't want to bust an eardrum. Didn't hurt, though, just crazy disorienting, like my head was in a bucket of water sort of, so drove the balance of the 1200 feet or so up. Never occurred to me to take another decongestant before heading out there. Head/ears NOT happy--could barely hear anything, and what I could hear whanged on my eardrums like they were 50 times louder than normal, they were stretched so tightly, I guess.

I wanted to share some snacks for Tika's birthday. Lots of other people showed up this week with snacks, too--when it rains, you know--.

So I said there was no way I was going to be running and would anyone consider running Boost for me, because she really wants to run. I wasn't sure whether she would--last couple of tries, no interest, wanted to go back to Mommy. Had three expert volunteers, but one friend ran her all 3 runs. Fun to see my dog working. Kept my fingers in my ears. Funny/odd. Someone said she's not running as fast as she does with me, but she still looked pretty good and ran really nicely. She had a couple of the same problems I have--couple of bars down, needing to really work each jump even when they're straight in front of Boost, but Boost stuck with her and paid attention all through the run. Pretty cool.

After 3 runs, my ears had gradually eased back to normal, but my sinuses were pulsing. So I headed down the mountain, and of course now the pressure reversed itself so my head got all funny by the time I reached the bottom.

Sigh. At least Boost was happy because she got to run; I was happy because she got to run and because she was willing to work with someone else; Tika was happy because she got a bunch of treats; I was happy again because I got a couple of chocolate-covered strawberries (someone else brought those); and now I think I've learned my lesson about going up mountains with a head cold without decongestant.

Now taking my weirded head to bed.