PAGING DOCTOR KICK-THIS-BUG'S-ASS....

Wow. I can't shake this fricking bug. This is getting pretty annoying. Now I'll have to go to the doctor to get an excuse for work. That's all right, though--I was planning to go, anyway. Maybe the doc can prescribe me some antibiotics or something. I generally don't take them, but this is a tenacious little bugger. (It makes me think of a million Olivers, virus-sized, swimming in my blood plasma, baying at the white blood cells, attacking without quarter.)

I talked to my supervisor about ten minutes ago. I hate making calls like that. I feel guilty, guilty as hell. It makes no difference that I have been holed up like a hibernating bear the last few days. It makes no difference that I sweat through another two shirts last night and woke to my sheets icy-cold wet. I still feel guilty for taking time off of work and still getting paid (Not a hundred percent, but something like ninety, I believe. Maybe seventy-five. Regardless, I ain't getting shut out of the greenbacks.).

Is there such a thing as "Irish guilt?" Or am I just making that up? I think that I've heard it somewhere before. I was IM-ing with my sister Melissa on Monday, the day that this crap-sickness began, and, even then, I was spouting off (jokingly) about Irish guilt. "Adam," she wrote, "you're killing me with that [Irish guilt] stuff." So I made sure to reference it about fifteen more times. That is me: the little brother. When I find something that might maybe perhaps get under my big sisters' skin a bit (even in jest, especially in jest) I hammer that "joke" until it is a trampled tin soda pop can, flat as a board, crinkled and all warshed out. It's one of my favourite things to do. I rather like to do that.

Irregardless, I am feeling a little guilty about being sick and missing work. It is more than legitimate...but I still feel like a slug. Truth be told, I feel quite a bit like a pussy. Meow.

Now, in my defense: gas utility, the work that I do (when I'm not at home, sucking my thumb and watching "Barney") is not exactly the easiest job on the body. It is really quite physically-demanding. Not to mention it has the capacity for danger. My company preaches safety all the time; it could be a safety issue if a worker is there, half-assed. Also, with a lowered lung capacity--from the dastardly bug--don't you think it would become easier to be overcome by the natural gas fumes, if they were so blowing? I think so. In fact, I know this to be the case.

And, finally, one last feather for my defense: a guy at work named Ken S____ was off with the "same" sickness. He stayed off for the loosely-expected three days and then he came back on the fourth...and ended going right back home. He had not been over the illness. My supervisor mentioned this to me in passing and I seized upon it. "Yeah," I said, "it's [the bug] a bastard."

And it is. It truly is. Sincerely. It sucks.

Okay. My Irish guilt thus assauged, I'm off to hit the hay. Maybe when I wake up, I won't be feeling so weak and achey. And so much like a feline.

I'm not counting on it, though.