May Day, mayday, mayday!

I have no idea how today can possibly be May 23 when I distinctly remember yesterday being May 1. Apparently I have lost a whole month somewhere between yesterday and today. Much of it fell to the wayside when Ally had a fever and was out of daycare for two days, then she got better over the weekend but this was followed by me getting her cold. Then the following week Ally had another fever and was out of daycare for two days but I got better, then she got better, and then we went on vacation. Which is when I developed bronchitis and Ally got stomach flu.

I kid you not. There ought to be a law against getting two separate colds in one month, with a double penalty for getting sick during a week at the beach. Thankfully I had a mild case of bronchitis and Ally only got a touch of stomach flu so we were still able to enjoy our vacation despite the unpleasant production of bodily secretions (I'l spare you the details).

But now it's the first day back home and I'm at an utter loss to account for my month of May. Even worse, things seem to have gone to pot in the meantime. The house needs cleaning. The flower beds out front need weeding. My laptop has developed some unexplained hiccups. My daughter turns four next Wednesday and I haven't planned a single thing for her birthday. The vegetable garden out back has not been planted yet. I'm having a hard time thinking about our menu for the week. There are ants in the kitchen. I haven't updated my Etsy shop in a while. Someone one turned on the summer heat and humidity while we were gone.

So the month of May traditionally begins with May Day, but it looks like I'm going to end it with the distress call, "Mayday, mayday, mayday!"

Consider the viruses that cause the common cold....

Sometime Thursday or maybe Friday morning I encountered a virus particle looking for a home.  Once introduced into my respiratory tract, said virus attached itself to one of my cells, injected its RNA into my cell, and began to replicate.  Later my hijacked cell burst open, releasing more copies of the virus, which in turn found other cells to hijack and create more copies.  In the meantime I developed the classic symptoms of the common cold:  a sore throat, sneezing, a runny nose, fatigue, and a stuffy head.  The virus and I have been in constant battle, with it trying to replicate as much as possible before my body's defenses can overwhelm it.  Think of it as a biological 'denial of service attack.'  The virus isn't alive....it's unable to reproduce on its own without the use of a host cell, namely one of mine.  This means that the virus doesn't meet the general definition of a living organism, one that is able to replicate on its own.  I just wonder if those viral particles don't experience a frisson of pleasure each time they hijack a cell.