Bit of Florida in February

I have good news.

I am sick.

I also intend to post every Tuesday from now until I explode...you have to help keep me honest on that one. Give me grief if I forget. But give me a break if I can't, like if I'm sick.

Which brings me back to my good news!

I have a cold.

This is a great thing in the fact that for being a person who tests the herbs on herself. It's kind of pointless to try new things when you are not sick.

Experiment Number One. Does this clover honey cough syrup work?
Patient: pre-cough syrup, feeling healthy and normal
Take cough syrup.
Patient, now feels healthy and normal.
Outcome, duh!


But here is my big chance!

Finally a reason to use my herbs I so lovingly collected and preserved this past summer.

There was a cold and stomach thing going around lately. So I've been boning up on my, take-these-so-it's-not-too-bad. herbs. These are great for when people around you are dropping like flies.

Elderberry in maple syrup. Compliments of an herbalist friend. It's great for kickstarting your immune system. I like to think of it as giving your body boxing gloves to fight.
Plus it tastes like Saturday mornings with pancakes and real maple syrup. Who doesn't love that?

Yarrow tea- a great solidifier to keep germs from finding the weak chinks in your armor.

Most importantly, fresh fruits and veggies. I'm learning more and more that the best way I can support my body (which does oh-so-much for me, like holding me upright, getting me to work, or better yet... to the freezer for a nip of ice cream) is with vitamins!

For us poor souls in the Northern Hemisphere, now is a hard time of year for fresh fruits and veggies.

Something about the lack of sunlight and gray days makes pulling a frozen pizza or a hot pocket seem way more appealing than a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing, fresh baby carrots, and plump cherry tomatoes, and bright kernels of yellow corn.

Probably because all our 'fresh' produce is chemically grown, ripened, and has the same watery cardboard taste. It's yuck but better than nothing.

But it's the fresh fruits and veggies that have the best source of vitamins. The way your body best understands how to consume it...as a whole food.


Vitamins in pill form are good. They are better than nothing.

 But taking a pill of all your vitamins and not at least trying to eat fresh foods is like watching a trailer for a movie, then spending the rest of the time it takes to watch the movie staring at a wall instead.

Nothing wrong with it... but doesn't make quite as much sense as watching the movie.

So I was doing the best I can with the cherry tomatoes, baby carrots in a bag, and lettuce, and the overarching watery cardboard taste.

Not to mention it's fickle affection toward rotting before you have a chance to pull it out of our crisper.

I tried.

All my vitamins and herbs helped for a while.


But the inevitable sickness happened...I was thrilled.

I learned recently that there are different types of colds.
There are the soggy "My nose is running so much I'm floating away".
There is the "I'm coughing so much that I sound like a Greyhound at the dog pound".
There is the chronic boomerang kind that goes away and comes back.
There is the short "one night stand" kind.
And a whole bunch of others.

Mine was a "I'm going to hide right behind your nose and throat and creep up to your years and be dry, and tender, and just hurt."

I must admit, part of the reason I love herbs and taking control of my health is because I am such a big baby when I get sick.

That first feeling of discomfort, and I instantly turn into that screaming, whining, tantrum-throwing small devil that you are tempted to disown.

So I started playing with what I know on how to get rid of sickness, and my first ally was...Garlic.

I love garlic, because it is herbalist's firepower for severely weakening just about any bug. Not to mention giving you a clear exit strategy in case you are caught at the worst party known to man.

So I started taking garlic, knowing that as I'm killing off bacteria, both good and bad in my body. I have to be able to replenish them with preferably the good. But the bad already got a foothold in my body. So I have to give it less space to play.

Think of the bully kid in your school. Now imagine just him and you in the gym. No teacher watching and an arsenal of balls in his court. He can cause some serious damage.

Not mentally add 3,000 other kids. It's shoulder to shoulder kids. And only one bully. There's not much room for him to move, much less pummel you with balls after giving you a wedgie all the while laughing at you.

I needed to get the other kids there, on my side. That's where yogurt, my one true love (don't tell all the other's) comes in. Yogurt is a natural source of all those good kids, squeezing the bully in. And as we all know, if bullies are not allowed to be bullies, after a certain amount of time, they shrivel up and die.

OK, this may not be true for real bullies. But germs have a rough time, especially when they have a highly trained immune system (thanks to your vitamins) just waiting to pounce on it like NCIS.


My problem with my garlic/yogurt regimen was that I wasn't regular with it.

Story of my life.

I'd take it in the mornings, then forget for the rest of the day. Lay down at night, intending to get up and take it, then open my eyes and it's morning again.

I was not giving my body the consistent support it needed to do it's job, healing.

I was hearing my body yell in a loud New York accent "Ya gonna help me or what?"

And while the garlic was wonderful at traveling though my digestive system, my circulatory system, and all the cells that my garlic infused blood passes by including my respiratory system. (hence the garlic breath). Working it's wonderful anti germ magic everywhere it went.

 It really wasn't able to get that high up spot right behind my nose going out to my ears.

The stronghold of my cold


That's when I changed tactics. Dry air was hard to breathe. But the above freezing, melting-snow humid air outside was much kinder on my attempt to maintain that oh so important thing called breathing.

If it just wasn't so darn cold.


So I made a steam tent.

Remember those memories of seeing people in commercials, or real life with their heads over the bathroom sink, fulled with warm water, and a towel over their head. Standing awkwardly, uncomfortably, for obnoxious amounts of time on sickness weakened legs, breathing and waiting for the miraculous change of 'feeling better' to occur.

Well that's what I did. But with my own comfortable twist.

I took the pan we roast the Thanksgiving turkey in. And put in a teapot full of boiling hot water in it. I placed it just beside the edge of my bed, which sits low to the ground.

Then, laying on my bed, with just my head over the edge, over the pan I covered my head in a throw blanket.

It was great. Well, way better than the alternative.

First off, it was much more comfortable that standing arched awkwardly over a sink.

It was warm and cozy.

The thick steam was balm to my throat.

And I put thyme leaves in the water, which is a mild antiseptic. Kinda like the nice guy going around and picking up after a party. Get's the job done without causing a ruckus.

And best of all, I had enough light that I could read! And if I was a DS player, I could have had that too.

Cozy, warm, humid, and overall very pleasant!


Not to mention when I got done, I felt like I had made leaps and bounds toward being healthy.

My throat wasn't so tender and dry. My ears hurt less, although my immune system was already starting to catch up with that one, and was starting the healing process before the steam tent.

All in all, I had a more hopeful feeling about beating this bug that had decided to take over my body these last few days.

I did another steam bath the end of that day, and am now trying to think of excuses to do it again.


Because frankly, in the middle of month three of sub-freezing weather, any excuse to feel warm humid air, and dream of Floridian coasts with the salt sting of the ocean surf rolling in, dance music and seagulls cry far in the distance, and a tanned, handsome towel boy (or girl) offering you a fruit smoothie, is a good thing.

Here's to your health!