I started coming down with a chest cold or something last weekend.  I woke up Saturday, feeling sort of crummy and it only got worse from there.  I don’t get sick that often nowadays.  I know some of you think that isn’t correct, but compared to when I was younger, I’m sick just a fraction of when I was younger.

A big reason for the continual illness is that I had my spleen removed when I was 6 years old.  I fell out of a tree and it ruptured, so they had to do an emergency splenectomy   The spleen holds a ton of thick red blood cells, super high hematocrite,  plus it filters the blood to your lungs.  So, I’ve historically had a bunch of lung infections throughout my lifetime.  I’ve had to take preventive pneumonia vaccines all my life.

I though that maybe I could keep the dripping out of my lungs, just up in my head.  But, no, it got into my throat and then lungs.  After reading all the bad news about antibiotics, plus, my own personal experience, I think I’ll just try to ride this one out, even though I’m coughing brown stuff out of my lungs.

I’ve been pretty stressed out the last few days and maybe that is one of the reasons that I feel so rotten.  I try to avoid stress, but sometimes it just finds you.

It’s funny how sometime being sick is such a drag and other times I doesn’t seem to matter much. I’d say I’m kind of in the middle here.  Early season illness is always a big setback.  You just get to where the pedals are turning over pretty well and the weight is coming off, then you get sick and it’s back to square one.  Well, maybe not square one, but square two or three.

I try to ride through sickness, but when the air temperature is in the 30’s, it’s a little tough.  I did an hour and a half with Bill yesterday.  It didn’t feel too bad, but I was wiped last night and this morning.  Maybe it was  a half hour too far.

Okay, enough of the moping .  The weather is supposed to get nice here towards the end of the week and hopefully I’ll be less anxious by then.

I couldn’t find any of these at the Walgreens.

I’ve been laying around a bunch the last couple days, with my eyes shut, but not able to sleep. Being sick sucks in many ways, but it also makes you remember how you “used” to be open to new things and absorb nearly everything.

I haven’t been sleeping much.  Well, much at the right time of the day.  I’ve been sleeping a bunch during the day, on and off, and then not sleeping much at night, on and off.

I’ve been listening a lot.  Not to podcasts on my iPhone, but to the sounds around me.  Laying in a lawn chair in the backyard, I am amazed how many sounds I hear.  I used to know all of these sounds, but they seemed foreign to me for some reason.  I think that is because I don’t listen so well anymore.  I don’t listen to my surroundings like I did when I was a kid.

What surprises me the most, during the day, is that most of the sounds I can hear aren’t those of people, but those of nature.  Off course there are the trash trucks driving by, and then occasional chainsaw, but really the sounds of the wind and nature drown out everything that humans produce.

The sounds I like the most and awes me the most are those of birds.  Spring is pretty much here in Kansas.  It’s been over 70 degrees for over a week and everyone and everything seems to be happy for the winter to be over.

Early in the morning, but really all day, birds are just at it, chirping away.  I was laying in my backyard yesterday and tried to count how many different birds I could hear.  It is really hard differentiating the separate birds when you’re so rusty at it.  Then trying to remember if you’ve already counted that sound before or if it’s a new bird.  I got up to over 10, then realized I’d lost count, so decided to just enjoy the music and forget the math.

Geese are migrating nowadays.  I have a special relationship with geese.  At least I appreciate them and their companionship.  When I was roofing my building a few years ago, nearly all night, they would be flying over constantly.  They were busy going south, as I was busy trying to finish up before the winter caught up with me.   They are migrating back north now, which means warmer weather.  I seem to think they sound just a tad different heading north than when they are going south, but that is probably just me imagining.

At night what I like the most is hearing the trains.  I can hear the trains on the tracks and their whistles.  We don’t leave anywhere close to any train tracks, the closest set, that are used regularly, are at least 4 miles away, but it is so quiet at night, they sound so near.  I like traveling by train.  That is another thing I don’t do so much anymore, that I should.  I imagine where the train is going, what it is hauling,  A good friend of mine from Iowa, Harold, told me once, that he thought it was a good way to judge the economy of a country by the frequency of trains.  I’d never though much about that, but I think he was right.

What I don’t like at night is the sirens.  It seems like there are way too many sirens.  Much too frequent. I’m up, feeling sorry for myself because I’m sick and then all of a sudden a siren.  Then another.  I think, “Man, I’m in a lot better situation than whoever those are heading for. ”  I always wonder if they are ambulance sirens or police.  Either way, it’s not good.

I like watching Bromont listen while I listen.  I know that he knows a thousand times more than I do about our surroundings.  He listens really well, but has smell, which for him, is way better than hearing.   Dogs have us beat in a lot of ways.  I’m never going to be as in touch with my local enviornment as Bromont, but I’m going to try to be more cognizant of my surrounding, using all my senses.

Trudi and Bromont in the backyard having a little moment.

After riding on Wednesday.