Why I love my coldsore

[Hoser McRhizzy]

What I did on my summer vacation, but for viruses you get from other people's fluids.  Feel free to leave odes to your rash here. 

[disclaimer]  This thread is not intended to slight the very real pain people with VDs have, or to make fun of the dead or dying.  It is exactly what it seems – An ode to my MOUF-HERP. [/disclaimer]


It starts as all true stories do: with a Russian exchange student in a back alley in South Korea in 2001.  Wide-eyed, he innocently told me that welter of boils on the side of his mouth was a sunburn.  Instead of saying, That's not what a sunburn looks like!  Or, Oh yeah?  Well, why'd you just burn one side of your lip, HUH?, I instead replied, ohOKMMMFFFFGGGG.  And two weeks later, was gifted with my first case of squirrel lip!

Over a decade later, I've realized not only was The Russian entirely worth it ("You are... too beautiful... My English is not enough...  Is torture to leave you!1!"), but my herp just keeps on giving.

Like right now!  In the past week, I've moved to a new apartment, couldn't use the service elevator (3 flights down, 5 flights up), walked s'more on a foot that's been crackling and nasty for months, one of the cats got fleas, and my Lady Love left for a 3 week vacation back home in Belfast.  Stressed, paid work backing up, eating take-away rather than making depressing dinners for one, picking flea poop off my sheets before I launder them, with tonnes of boxes unpacked so, even to me, it looks like I'm some crazy hoarder chick... 

... THIS is when The Tingle poofs out into a DERP!

This should, by any CIVILIZED STANDARDS, have me shamed and hiding in my apartment, ordering more take-away, crying into my itchy puss.

But there's something... awesome... about strutting through the throngs of businessmen and sports fans down Front St., and enjoying their double-take.  They start out all Fonzie and come up eee.  I make them feel like my cat's fleas make me feel.  And that's a fleeting specialness I have to enjoy while I have it. 

More to the point and more importantly, if not for the visible manifestation of baw-stress on the front of my face, I'd be tempted to pep-talk myself into feeling guilty for feeling crabby right now.  Like this:

Life changes, you roll with the punches, and why are you stressed when you should be elated over more new things in life!?   Hey!  Isn't that a farmer's market down the street?  Whee!!  Why so glum!?

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Whether it sleeps quietly in my spine, or spurtz out through a split lip, scaring riders on public transit, the herp-a-derp shows me that this is not a normal time, and strangely enough, reminds me that my brain/body will have some equilibrium again in a few weeks, as it always does.

rhiz,
- has no shame (and is inspired by dok's invitation to tweet my un-creative trivialities)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah. I got herpes from my mom.

So much for the memories!