Cozy Fever Time in anticlimatic

I’m not sure there’s anything more comforting than the shiny picture on the packet of “sweet dreams” tea. Summer-dusk blue with winking stars and a crescent storybook moon-
Sweet Dreams, a calming blend of mint and chamomile

Bit of a cold, currently sipping the stuff while hobbling around gracelessly and fevered. My skin is all pins and needles in rushing waves. This morning I was up at 4 in the pre dawn dark after thrashing about unable to comfort myself. That weird fevered warmth had taken me. I don’t mind a good cold once in a while. Reminds me that my immune system works. If I were to rate my standard cold symptoms from least favorite to most tolerable, I’d have to order them: active cough, constant sneezing/congestion/nose flooding, double barrel stuffed up, single barrel stuffed up, sore throat, passive/productive cough, fever. And while fever is the symptom I mind the least, it’s the only one that will keep me home from work.

It’s so strange to me the things I thought would be the absolute worst, in regards to working conditions, have come to completely endear themselves to me. When I was young I always thought I wanted to work with people, or around people. I was fascinated by psychology at the time, as most likely are. People were awe inspiring and role models didn’t seem to be hard to find at that age. I wanted to work somewhere clean and comfortable- heated and air conditioned, like a library or a great house or an old hotel or an office. Yet all I can think about tonight, in my fevered state, is how much I’m looking forward to the sweet Monday morning taste of frozen air on my face and the soft blissful sound of silence to carry me for hours into the eventual din of lunchtime.

On our NPR station there is this guy, who I believe is a local radio personality- as our NPR is out of Mt Pleasant College several hours south. Robert Barklay, the “Duke Of Juke” who hosts a “Juke Joint” show late nights featuring mostly blues. I always found him to be kind of a dweeb- having seen him once in person at a local Dougie Maclean concert- and never cared for his radio cadence. In fact I run an inside joke emulating his style to anyone I know that might recognize it. Listening to him tonight, though- I’ve had a change of heart. I’m going to miss him, this relic of the old NPR guard. He might be the oldest familiar voice I know on NPR, going back at least 20 years at this point to quiet evenings in my second girlfriend’s candlelit apartment.