Sick Days and Special Tea

I could feel it coming yesterday-all the telltale signs were there.

"You're really snappy today", said my intern. "Really snappy with the kids, and first thing in the morning! What's wrong with you?" (I invite and am thankful for her honesty.) Snappiness often precedes some kind of sickness for me.

Snappy, exhausted, coughing, sneezing, and lots of Kleenex. Yep, I was getting a cold. I had been mildly sick last week and denied it, using lots of Zicam and drinking my special tea (more on that below). I felt better on Saturday and on Sunday even went for a run with my sister Caroline. We got caught in the cold rain...not good if you are fighting a cold, but I am training for a 10K in April and thought I HAD to get the run in.

The cold wasn't going to be denied. By last night I had to succumb to posting my absence on our online sub system and set out making lesson plans to upload to the system and email to the school so that they'd be in place this morning. That was it- I was not going in. The little world of my classroom would have to survive without me.

Today has been a rather nice day- I've slept, watched a little TV, and caught up on friends in blog-land. To make myself feel better, I set up a little tray complete with freshly cut daffodils from our yard, our Polish Pottery teapot that we only use on 'special occasions' (a wedding gift from my dear friend Susanne-who told us to buy something extravagant that we'd never think of getting otherwise. A $100 teapot certainly qualifies, and I think it makes me feel better just using it instead of watching it collect dust), and some tea that I promise, will make you feel better almost immediately.

I first discovered the tea when I lived in Ireland. You cannot get it in the US. It is Twinings' Raspberry-Echinacea and it has a lovely taste as well as healing qualities. I've even managed to get LeGrande to drink the pink, fruity stuff and he is convinced of it's homeopathic qualities. The guys he works with laugh about it but he's had the least sicknesses of them all. It is something that I pull out whenever I feel the slightest bit sick and it always works. I've been stingy with it and saved what I bought when I was last in Ireland, in February of 2004.

Alas, the tea ran out in December. I was forced to go online to hunt for it and the cheapest price I found was from a very nice lady from the UK. She sells it on her ebay store and will ship it to you almost immediately. I selected 2 boxes of the tea, hit "pay now" and was shocked at the figure that had quickly been zapped from my checking account- get ready- $17.00 for TWO boxes of tea (20 bags each), the exchange rate from the pound to the dollar, and a shipping charge. Let's see, that makes my teabags approximately $0.43 each. Yikes! Those two boxes were worth one hour of my teaching day! However, I am now permanently addicted to Raspberry Echinacea tea so I will have to keep teaching in order to support my addiction.

Keep teaching, I will, but I did enjoy the day away from my precious bunch of 16 7 year olds who still don't remember to cover their noses when they sneeze and probably gave me the lovely mess that I have now. It WAS a luxury to rest and drink my special tea! Maybe tomorrow I won't be so snappy.