May 23rd

Oh, what a splendid day to be alive! I can finally swallow again, and this morning I had my first taste of solid food in the last 2.5 days. I whistled in the shower, gave Gregory a morning hug, and did pushups in the parking lot. But enough about me, lets talk about you!

You left me two days ago; a battered shrimp slowly and unenergetically looping a noose at the end of his rope. It turned out that someone or something had my rope and slowly nursed me back to my health. Those somethings were: tea bags dipped in hot water, apple cider vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, oranges, and aloe juice (gag me.) Notice that all of the above are normally only ingested through the mouth, and, as the mouth bone is connected to the throat bone, this caused me much heartache. I also impressively injected 5000% of the daily recommended value of Vitamin C into my body on Wednesday. None of this really helped, but it felt good to support the fringe herbal remedies industry.

If you would have been perched politely on my Wednesday shoulder, you would have joined me in rocking back and forth in my lunch room chair, eyes closed, shivering. You would have then gone back to the cubicle with me, where we both would have lost 10 pounds through sweating tactics developed in a greenhouse laboratory; a lab with a black floor and located on the equator. If you were still on my shoulder after all this, you would have then witnessed a miracle; your best friend, Yours Truly, rising slowly into the air, weightless, and spinning quickly in tight circles. This would have continued for most of the afternoon, the worst part being that my skin felt more sensitive than a farm-raised and privately-schooled salmon is to derogatory remarks. All my usually graceful movements were handicapped by my feverish state, and on the walk out of the building I would pause every few seconds to just slump against the wall and regain my composure.

Thursday morning bid good day to me by backhanding me across the esophagus. The fever had left, apparently for more exotic shores. I literally had to curl into a ball whenever I needed to swallow, so I brought an empty water bottle with me to work. By using this to relieve my mouth bladder whenever saliva built up, I was able to save myself a good 1000 swallows throughout the day. I had to whisper whenever spoken to, but, as much as possible, I just stuck to the shadows and planned my comeback.

Today is a great day, as I’ve already said. I threw a little gel in my hair this morning (Casual Friday requirement,) wore a pink shirt in support of Greg’s one hour bout of pink eye, and called the Throat Rape hotline and told them to withdraw my complaint. I dedicated myself to a day of hard work and stuck to that credo. I scheduled about 20 total plant days today and fielded 2 calls in regard to John Pickford. I picked off TWO bagels from the Bagel Club and choked them down with cranberry juice at lunch (I’m still not at 100%.) When Sal pulled me aside to tell me I’m doing a great job with plant scheduling, he got so excited that his salt-n-pepper mustache started quaking and I think I heard him say a few uplifting Mexican phrases. If I can’t get him to adopt me by the end of the summer, at the very least I am going to break his will. And if you don’t get what that means, consider this, surely estate and death taxes are lower in Mexico than they are here…