Gahhhhhh.

You guys, this summer has kicked my ass. If I am ever again senseless enough to say, aloud, “I never get sick,” you have my permission to punch me in the neck.

I thought I was off the hook after Australia. I was convinced I would get sick after days of travel, but I got off lucky. Maybe it’s because, as soon as I was home again I drove up to Vermont and went for a run with my cousin during a muggy New England heat wave, I don’t know…but I didn’t get that sick.

Then, wham. Graham came to visit for 10 days, and I got hit with a chest cold the likes of which I haven’t experienced in YEARS. Y’all, I was still coughing after a month. When it finally subsided, I started running again and started to get back into my routine, just thankful to be able to breathe. Graham took that bug home with him (sorry, honey!), but I tried really, really hard not to give it to anyone else. I stayed home, working about half time, during the contagious phase — as far as I know, I didn’t pass it around the office.

If I sound a little defensive about that, it’s because I totally am. Last week, I got another bug, this time a head cold, exactly four days after a colleague came in sick for a 30-minute meeting and hung out in my cube before leaving. It came on while I was at work. I left as soon as I could, I worked from home the next morning, and I took the rest of the day off to rest (although I did go to class to take a final exam). By Thursday, I was rested and feeling better; I was about as congested then as I am today, and today I was able to do pranayam at the end of yoga.

However.

I know at least one colleague was concerned enough about my contagion that she mentioned it to someone else, and that someone else told me. Funnily enough, that messenger is the person who came in sick and passed the bug to me.

I’m going to just leave that right there. It’s a tiny thing, a fly in my cough drop, if you will.

I’m getting better. Slowly. Grouchily.

I’ve been thinking about this year and I’ve decided healthy living isn’t doing me any favors. I got sick after traveling at New Year’s…sort of a light flu, as I recall. I got that stomach bug in March that made me so sick my friend’s kids were worried about me and I went on my mad smoothies-and-soup kick. I nearly got sick after Oz — I did go through two bags of Ricolas. And now I’ve spent fully half the summer blowing my nose, wrapping up in quilts, and apologizing to professors for writing under the influence of Dayquil.

Yeah, clean living can bite me.