Spring Fever

Much like the Christmas celebrant who is still discovering renegade green pine needles scattered about his house in mid-March, the invalid recovering from influenza continues to find old and crumpled cough drop wrappers in the bottom of his coat pockets long after his symptoms have disappeared.
If this sounds like some proverb in a Chinese fortune cookie, then that's because I've recently been slurping more than my fair share of hot and sour soups, which I regard as bowls of steamy acupuncture for my gummed-up nasal passages. When I am rendered inactive by a cold I favor both the Oriental herb and the Swiss lozenge as means to a restorative end. However, if I am absolutely bed-ridden by an unusually powerful runny nose I employ a medicinal tincture of witchy cauldron concoction called "The Macbeth Infusion." I'm not sure what's in it, exactly, but I'm pretty sure I can taste eye of newt, blind worm's sting and liver of blaspheming Jew in there. Yuck! Still, it's not quite as disgusting as Vicks Nyquil at any rate.