There are certain things I associate with this time of year. Christmas lights, excessive eating of delicious food, family, taking long naps and reading during the days, and colds. True, I am a double literature major; however, I'm nevertheless a little disappointed in my perceived inability to detect a cold coming on within my own body. At times, it seems the things that I do to feel better (taking vitamin C and Airborne, for instance), are almost like superstitious healing methods. I have no idea how they work; yet, I'm still desperate to get well as soon as humanely possible. I've heard from many a pre-med major that the body can only intake so much of these nutritious vitamins, a level that apparently is far below the recommended dosage on these bottles of Echinacea and immunity juices.

Even as I write this, I'm trying to recover from some mysterious monster that hit me out of nowhere the other morning. It's funny; one evening I'll feel great and I'll wake up the next morning with a suicidal headache, a throat so sore I wonder how I could ever eat again (yet I always find a way), and a cough that shakes my body. Feeling better is always such a long, tedious process. Being impatient as I am, I always jump the gun on my healing and typically get sick a week or two after my "recovery." It's a little sad that, when I'm not well, I still can't seem to find time to take care of myself and nurse my way back to good health again. I often wonder if this type of lifestyle is what gets me sick to begin with; I highly doubt that running on 5 or 6 hours of sleep on a "good" night is healthy for a late teen.

Sick time, as I have surnamed it, does allow for one opportunity: watching more TV than normal citizens should be allowed to. Every one of my all-time favorite trashy daytime TV shows was discovered during one of those days when I, home from school and scorning the day I ever complimented my immune system, flipped through the channels of Home Shopping and Infomercial magic. Maury to this day stands as a testament to this good "fortune" of mine. Who doesn't want to see pre-teen mothers pulling one another's hair out over a scrawny, insufficient partner's baby on television with an elderly man calmly speaking into the microphone and picking at his argyle sweater? And that's not even considering the fun that comes with fever-related hallucinations.