A Truck Full of Fat Men

What's next? I'll tell you what's next, a GD cold. That's what's next.
Not cold as in, "I can't believe how goddamn cold it is and it's fucking April". April showers my dried chapped ass. It snowed my entire way home yesterday. Sorry about that....where was I? Oh yeah, but a cold as in, the sniffles, the runny nose, the dry hacking cough...listen to me, I sound like a bloody Contact C commercial.
Anyhoo, when I was younger a cold lasted two days tops. It usually started something like this. You'd wake up in the morning and feel a little sick, nothing to bad, you just knew that you weren't quite right. So you would call your Mom into your room, conjure up a few coughs, sniffle a few times and then in your most pathetic, sick voice you'd tell your Mom that you didn't "feel well" and that you should probably stay home from school. This would typically work, unless you over acted or you tried it way too many times. Also, you had to pick your sick days. Not on days when you had a test, cause that's just plain obvious. And not on days when you had hockey practice, cause then you'd get the, "Well if you're not well enough to go to school, then you're not well enough to go to hockey". Like I said, you had to pick your days.
Now, you may be legitimately sick, but when you're a kid a cold is nothing. A mere blip in the road. You cough and sneeze a few times and your nose runs a little. Big woop. For the most part you could still do pretty much anything you would normally do. In a twisted way, it even seemed like a blessing. You got to stay home from school and get pampered by your mother all day, and all you had to do was cough and sneeze every thirty to forty minutes. Ah yes, getting pampered by your mother. She'd make you soup. She'd give you ginger ale. She may even move the TV into your room if you're just to sick to get out of bed and move downstairs to the living room. Oh, those were the days.
But now that I'm older, at least for me, when I get a cold, it's like getting kicked in the goddamn head with a stiletto, while a fat man jumps on my chest. It amazes me just how much fucking snot my nose can produce. I've gone through two boxes of Kleenexes in the last 36 hours. I've drank over 4L of orange juice, tried four different types of daytime/night time cold remedies and watched 6 different episodes of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager...each.
Actually that's one thing that's better now. The daytime TV. When I was a kid I got two channels, the CBC and CTV. I could choose between The Littlest Hobo or the Dini Petty Show. Not exactly the best selection in daytime programming. At least now I can choose which repeated episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation I want to watch a 3 in the afternoon. I can watch it on Space or I can watch it on Spike. It basically comes down to which episode I've seen fewer times. Oh, what wonders the future has shown us. Just look how far we've come!
This is now the third day of work I've missed. I left early on Monday cause I could feel the cold coming. I heard it's early warning cry, that irritating scratch in the back of your throat, and I heeded it's warning. I was supposed to brew back to back days, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I knew it was going to take all the energy I had to pull that off. A normal brew day lasts between 10-12 hours in which I might get to sit down for maybe ten minutes. Also the brewhouse it self is a green house. With the kettles steaming all day on the inside and the sun bursting through the windows from the outside, it can reach some pretty ridiculous temperatures in there. I once weighed my self before and after a brew day...I sweat off 7lbs. So like I said, I heeded the warning and decided it was best if I rested the rest of the day and tried to stop this thing before it became a full blown nightmare.
Well, I woke up at 5am on Tuesday and that fat man who sits on my chest I mentioned earlier, was now not only jumping on my chest but he was leaping up in the air and doing "Power Knee Drops" onto my throat. And that stiletto kick to the head, had pierced my skull and was deeply implanted into my temple. So I picked up the phone, called work, conjured up a few coughs, sniffled a little and in my most pathetic, sick voice, told them that I wasn't feeling well and should probably stay home. I spent the next twelve hours on the couch trying to get the endless stream of snot and mucous out of my nose. But it wouldn't stop. Kleenex after Kleenex, it ate through the box in no time at all. I couldn't believe it.
Even after almost two full days on the couch I still felt awful. But I went in yesterday, cause dammit, that beers not going to make itself. So I took two different types of daytime medicine, brought an entire box of Kleenex, filled my Nalgene full of OJ and headed out. That beer was getting made. Oh yes, it was getting made.
14 hours later I was home. And that fat man on my chest was now a truck full of fat men on it's way to a camp designed to help fat men just like these lose weight. Cause even for fat men, these men were fat. Fat guys on the street would tease these guys for being fat. And even after two weeks at this camp, they'd still be fat but at least they'd be able to reenter the general population.
Long story short, I'm home again and attempting to rest up for tomorrow's brew day. It's going to be another long one, but seriously, how long can this cold last? It'll be five days tomorrow.
I've done everything possible to get rid of this thing but it just won't go away. I wish my Mom were here to make me soup.
So what's next?