Sit and drink Echinacea tea....

So as I mentioned yesterday I have this cold. Sort of. I have a cough and some random body aches. Nothing awful, but enough to make me uncomfortable and unable to properly concentrate on anything. I hate that. I just want to feel well enough to go about my day without distraction or be sick enough to justify staying home and catching up on my reading (vampires, vampires, and more vampires!) and those Degrassi the Next Generation DVDs I’m so hooked on. (I still love the original Degrassi, but I can’t get enough of shows and stuff that involve kids facing real issues, hence I’m a YA writer I guess.) This cold is really throwing me off because it is nothing like my usual cold. I’ve never gotten a cough since I quit smoking in my early twenties. Usually I get a sore throat, then a runny nose and then a head ache and body aches. When those body aches kick in or I am sneezing way too much, I stay home from work. I get a decent amount of sick time. I don’t believe in infecting others if it is avoidable. I wish the people who have been hacking up a lung around my office would return that courtesy because I know it’s their fault I have the mystery illness.

I’m trying desperately to fight it off so it doesn’t become a full blown cold and I can return to normalcy (though a couple days on the couch with books and DVDs does sound incredibly appealing, not so much if it involves feeling like ass). Since there is no cure for the common cold I have my own methods. I don’t like cold medicine if I can avoid it, though I did take Nyquil last night to make me stop coughing long enough to sleep (and part of me wonders if I feel like crap because of the Nyquil). I am all about mass quantities of liquids, especially OJ and these Traditional Medicinals teas I’ve been sucking down the Breathe Easy brew all morning along with Organic Echinacea. I don’t know why but I’m convinced that Echinacea and ginger will cure everything. The ginger thing I got from a friend who worked at Whole Foods, he used to drink a shot of it every day for the 7 years he worked there and apparently never got sick once. So when I can I go get a smoothie with a ginger shot when I feel like I’m getting sick, otherwise I eat ramen with a strong ginger base. I also used to swear by airbourne even though my pharmacist scoffed at the idea, but I don’t know that it is done so much for me as of late and I get so sick of drinking it every few hours, it’s too sweet. So liquids, Echinacea, ginger and vitamin C are my main things. I would say sleep, but I’m bad at that. When my body lets me do that, I am more than happy to, but often even when I’m sick it doesn’t. Anyone else have any unorthodox cold cures I can try so I can get back to my normal self and write blogs that are more interesting and less whiny?