In which I get my energy back and vocalize every thought I've thunk this week

The first thing I did when I walked in the door tonight was strip my bed of the sick sheets that have been inhabiting it all week. (And, truthfully, maybe a week or three before that. Whatever. One of those weeks was spent in New York.) I threw my sheets in the hamper and the comforter and duvet in a pile to bring to the laundromat tomorrow for a professional wash. In the meantime, I made my bed with the only other really comfy blanket I have, which happens to be for a twin bed. It looks a bit sad and lonely.

Perhaps this would help.

(Seriously. Anyone? Although I would opt for a more stylish shirt. Even if I'm just going to drool on it.)

The second thing I did when I walked in the door tonight was heat up the second cup of soup Nicole brought me yesterday in the midst of my Josie-Grossiness. And I don't know how to say that it's not just a good friend that will bring you soup in your time of need; or that it's not just a good friend who will bring you said soup from across the street from your own house because you are too much of a freaking mess to pull it together to even call for delivery; but that it's a great friend who thinks ahead to bring you two cups of soup so that, in case you're still feeling under the weather, you won't have to worry about dinner the following night. Thank you, Nicole. Your parents raised you so well.

I'm not going to talk anymore about being sick, but I will list for you the number of products I tried in a one-woman, highly unscientific experiment trying to feel better. Beginning last Sunday and sampled throughout the course of the week, though never more frequently than every four hours or more than six times per day:

- EmergenC
- Tylenol PM
- TheraFlu Thin Strips
- DayQuil liquicaps
- NyQuil liquicaps
- Sudafed PE (missing the good stuff, which, I came to find out, was also why the DayQuil didn't work)
- Aleve
- Liters, upon liters of water (and yes, Abby, I finally succumbed to tap)

None of these products gave me any relief, even temporarily, although the TheraFlu strips made me sleep a little bit. Especially that afternoon I washed it down with a beer. What did make me feel immediately better today, however, was trying this random tea we had in our office:
Yogi Tea Cold Season. Yes, I was already feeling better enough to be back at work, but it was the first time since Tuesday I could breathe through my nose again. I had tried some tea from my own cupboard, but it did little for me, other than give me one more dish to wash at some point. Or glass, whatever.

Speaking of drugs, I realized just last week that I drive by Celebrity Rehab's Pasadena Recovery Center every single day on my way home from work. Huh.

And speaking of TV, I watched lots of it this week. Did you know that SoapNet plays 90210 for two hours every afternoon? And that they are currently running the end-of-the-first-season and that-summer-spent-at-the-Beverly-Hills-Beach-Club which I now know could never exist in real life because, um, Beverly Hills isn't on the beach. But oh! It was 90210 before it turned into Vampy Soap After Dark, which of course I still love, but this, this! was pure, early-90's innocence wrapped up in day-glo and topped with a flowered hair scrunchie!

It's so easy to forget that before Kelly went to college and cut her hair and had horrible things happen to her year after tragic year, she was a real bitch in high school! Donna barely even had a speaking role the first season. David, who grew up to be one of the better looking of the bunch, totally looked the part of the prepubescent geek. And then there was Steve, with his flask at the spring dance - who looked exactly the same throughout the entire ten season run.

It was refreshing to watch a teen-centric show that didn't center around sex, or at least slutting around. I love me some Gossip Girl, but I can't imagine having understood it, much less related to it, at the age when I was first watching 90210. There were somewhat "soapy" and adult issues in these episodes - Kelly's mom getting sober, Steve finding out he was adopted, Brenda deciding to "do it" with Dylan - but overall, in those years, the show was tooth-numbingly sweet, almost painfully wholesome.

When I wasn't watching 90210, I caught up on another early 90's gem, Saved by the Bell; or one of my oldest childhood favorites, Alice. About a month or two ago, I spent one night watching YouTube clips of the opening credits of some of my favorite TV shows. Alice was one of them. I spent that night, too, nostalgic for the programs of my youth, or at least their snappy theme songs that always set the story: One Day at a Time, Laverne and Shirley, Welcome Back Kotter, The Facts of Life, Charles in Charge, Growing Pains. No one does this anymore - how come?

I suppose to do so now would appear antiquated, what with all of our TiVo'd, Internet-accessed, reality-televised appetites for production. But after endless weeks of watching Jeff Conaway melt down in rehab or following Britney's real-life drama in real time, online, I could use more than a spoonful of antiquity to wash down what's become a near overdose of celeb-reality.