Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Man Flu Chronicles


I see the jokes online all of the time.  Man flu.  Wives love to joke about the man flu.   They make funny facebook comments about it.  The discuss it among themselves and laugh.  But when you live in a same sex marriage there are no jokes.  Because we know the man flu is real.  I don't understand how straight men survive the man flu jokes.

Last week I heard Mark sneeze.  He said "Oh no.  I feel a soar throat starting and I am feeling stuffy."  I knew what that meant.  He was bringing man flu into the house.  And I knew it was going to be a long two weeks because once he was better I knew I would be coming down with it.  There is no doubt about that.   But for now he was the one who was getting sick and I had to make sure he was comfortable and taken care of.   So I went  to the grocery store and bought the supplies: cold meds, soft drinks, chicken soup ingredients, and lots of snacks.    He was getting sick on Thursday so we both knew we were in for the weekend.  We checked our Netflix que.   We got out the comforter.  And we headed down to our man cave in the basement for the duration.   By Monday he was feeling better.  That's a typical duration for man flu.   I noticed we were running out of chicken soup and snacks when I sneezed.  Mark had gone to work on Monday as he was feeling better.  So he was not there to hear me sneeze.   So I was on my own.  I headed back to the grocery store knowing I needed supplies.   I bought the ingredients for making lasagna, more cold medication, and lots of snacks.  Snacks are the most important things.  Once you are down with man flu you need lots of snacks in your man cave.   I returned home and felt the scratchy throat start.  I knew it was only a matter of hours before I was down for the count.  So I immediately started the prep for making the lasagna.  This would be our survival food for the next three days as I took my turn battling the man flu.   By the  time the  lasagna was finished I felt the chills starting and knew it was time to head to the cave, turn on the TV and pull up the comforter.


If I must be ill I will remain classy.  Taking my Alka Seltzer Plus in a wine glass.


Larry's man flu day 1:  When my daughters were little and got sick we always made a habit of watching cheesy sci fi or fantasy movies while they were getting better.  To this day when my two girls get sick they will call me and tell me they are watching Total Recall and I immediately know what that means.   Day one of this cold I broke out the movie Krull.   It's a bizarre 80's fantasy film.  It's very trippy and strange.  I was taking Alka Seltzer Plus for my man flu.  Alka Seltzer Plus reacts very strange in my system.  It's almost hallucinogenic.  So the combination of Krull and Alka Seltzer Plus were a perfect combination.  The medicine also makes me very drowsy.  So I dozed in and out of sleep with the bizarre images of Krull of in my head.   Between naps and hand fulls of potato chips I got through the movie.   When Mark home we heated up the lasagna and had supper together in the man cave.



Larry's man flu day 2:  Day two of the Alka Seltzer Plus and bizarre movies.  Today it was a sand and sandal epic.  I combined the Alka Seltzer Plus high with images of Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Bana in the almost 3 hour epic Troy.   It was a perfect choice as there was also a lot of special features on the DVD to watch.  So I had an entire afternoon of dozing off, potato chips, and freshly opened bag of Mars fun sized variety candy bars.   I also had lots of strange bizarre dreams for the second night in a row from the Alka Seltzer Plus.  So I knew I had to spend the next day working that med out of my system.  It always works well for my colds.  It makes me feel better, makes me a little trippy, and sends me to la la land.  But I can only do that for a couple of days.   We had lasagna once more this evening and went on to our binge watching of the TV series Lost.  We started this while Mark was ill.  We had not watched Lost when it was originally on TV.  So with cold meds in our system we entered into the trippy bizarre world of island life on Lost.

Larry's man flu day 3:  Day three had to be planned carefully.  It was time to step away from the Alka Seltzer Plus and get back to some sort of reality.  I got up early and headed to CVS for some different medication.  Then I returned home to the man cave.  I broke out the orange juice, grabbed the Mars fun sized bag of candy bars and put The English Patient in the Blu Ray player.  This was going to be a long day and it called for a long movie.  And once again there was a lot of extra features on the Blu Ray so I had an entire day planned out.  I was Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche was my nurse for the day.  I did receive a Facebook message from my daughter when she saw I was watching The English Patient.  She wanted to know if I was really that desperate.  She hates the movie and wanted to leave when we went to see it back in 1996.  But she knows I love it and that it's a comfort movie for me.  Mark and I continued our Lost binge watching that evening.   He was still a little stuffy from last week.  I was finally beginning to feel a little better.   So everything was looking up.  We finished up the lasagna leaving just enough for my lunch tomorrow.

Larry's man flu day 4: I am feeling better today.  I missed my weekly night of trivia last night and hated that.  My team said they missed me also.  But they are all ladies and I knew they did not want to deal with my man flu so it was best I stayed home.  They can read this and tease me about it next week.  I plan to get off my sofa and crawl out of the cave today.  I might even run the vacuum.  We will see.  I do think one more movie is in order today.  I am not sure what it will be yet but I need to finish up that bag of Mars Fun Sized Candy Bars so it needs to be a fun movie.  Tomorrow I plan to return to the world of the living.  

OH NO.  I just realized tomorrow is January 20.  Donald Trump's Inauguration Day.  The cosmos is playing mean tricks on me.  Just when I am hoping to feel better and get back to reality I realize it's  the day I have been dreading since last November.   Life just got real.  No time for TV's and man caves tomorrow.  It's a media black out day for me.  But I guess it could be worse.  No wait who am I kidding.  This could not get much worse.  Thank God the man flu has passed though and I can get out and away from it all.

3 comments:

  1. "And we headed down to our man cafe in the basement for the duration."

    I couldn't tell if this was a typo or if you legitimately started calling it the Man Cafe.

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