That Smell

Ooooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you


I'm recovered from most disgusting parts of my Week o' Sickliness. A cold has taken the place of the stomach problems. The good news? My evening glass of wine stays in my stomach, where it can do some good in dulling my brain. Although it's a brain already dulled by DayQuil. (Mom: don't worry. I'm not really mixing the two. Or not much.)

So I came back to work today. To say I feel fine would not only be a gross exaggeration, it would be an outright lie. But I felt dulled enough by whatever wonderdrugs that Walgreens puts in its DayQuil rip-off medicine to sit behind a desk for eight hours. (Sidenote: the cover of said bottle of wonderfullness has the phrase "pseudophedrine free." Is this good or bad? I have a feeling that I would enjoy the benefits of pseudophedrine. And I could Google it. But I'm just not feeling like typing the word pseudophedrine again. I have to save my energy, after all.)

I've been at work for almost two hours. I debated calling in again, but it just felt wrong - as if I were playing hooky, because I didn't really feel sick enough to stay home from work. And that's one of my ethics markers: even if you don't know why something might be wrong, if you just feel like it is, then it probably is. So I came.

And man, I really should have listened to that devil on my shoulder telling me to crawl under the covers and worry about my stance on personal work ethics some other time (not to mention the fact that even thinking the word "ethical" without any caffeine in my system almost killed me). Because exactly one hour and 34 minutes after my work day began, the construction crew fired up the tar machine on the new building extension. And now, the noxious smell of tar fumes is permeating the library. I thought that because of my clogged nasal highways I'd be in better shape than the rest of the library staff. But there's something about the smell of hot tar that sneaks right past the blockages and sits in your nose, no matter how hard you wish for it not to. And the things that it's doing to my throat....

How in the world do these guys handle it? I mean, I've only been sitting here in a tar cloud for about 30 minutes, and I'm praying for some kind of natural disaster to shut down the library. And those guys work with this smell all the time. Do you have to sear out the lining of your nose to become a construction guy?
Update: I'm home again. The tar got to my throat and sent me into hacking fits that made it sound as if I were trying to give birth to a new set of lungs via my esophogus. And the rest of the librarians didn't want to listen to that anymore than they wanted to listen to the sounds I was making the other morning. And I've decided that my big invention is going to be scented tar. Wouldn't the smell of apples and cinnamon be a lot better than Burning Hair? Or how about Citrus Breeze. Yeah...tar that freshens the great outdoors while it does its tar-thing. Hmmm... So as soon as best friend finds an affordable place to give her an oil change sometime before Jesus returns, we'll hit the road with my hubby and head to my sister's place, which means we'll probably make it all the way tonight instead of stopping somewhere in Deliverance Country, Georgia for the night. And...umm...Sis? I tried to call. So if you're reading this at 11 PM ... go ahead and open another bottle of red for me. I'll be there soon.