A Day and A Half of Miming

My son picked up a nasty cold/flu-ish virus two weeks ago, and eagerly passed it onto the rest of his family so that we can share in the misery :)).  I had done a pretty good job of thwarting off the sickness by drinking a lot of water, taking vitamins, and keeping my thoughts on being healthy vs. not being sick.  I was doing well and then by Wednesday, I had a minor sore throat.  It cleared up by the afternoon, but I was definitely not 100%.  My throat was being pummeled by mucus and phlegm during the day.  So I was coughing up stuff all day and spitting out all kinds of shades of green as time went on.

I went to class and had a jolly ole time laughing so hard I couldn't breathe at times.  By the time I got home, my throat and voice were on fire.  I knew that I had hurt myself :( .  The only thing I could do is lay off my cords as long as possible to allow the extra mucus and phlegm soothe all the irritations I had created.  When I woke up Thursday morning, my voice was shot :(.  I struggled through the day w/ work to not speak to anyone (gotta love instant messaging tools), and get off any conference calls I was on as quickly as possible.  By the end of the work day, my throat was on fire again.  To compound the calamity, I had rehearsal that night.  DAH!  I was dying last night.

This morning I woke up and laid off my voice completely.  My voice was no longer feeling like the bowels of Hades but I knew that I was not even close to being out of the woods of ruining my voice for good.  I delegated my conference calls to others to run, slept a little bit, and haven't said a whole lot to anyone.  I wish some a happy birthday by taking a picture of me holding up a sign wishing them a happy birthday in an email.  I normally would call but this was a special scenario. I ordered the Wifey's drink at Starbucks by pointing at the text message on my cellphone and letting them read it.  to cap things off, I'm going to bed relatively early to rest up before trying to warm up my voice to morrow morning to a usable state.

I have a new appreciation for verbal and non-verbal communication.  I realized we don't need to speak as much as we think we do to communicate.  We should all take a day of silence a week to experience the world in a slightly different way.