Top Ten Best Ways to Stay Awake Driving

10. Daydream. This works until your daydreams start putting you to sleep. Sleeping while driving is bad.

9. Talk to yourself. Or sing. This works well, but you might feel dumb. Other drivers - with people in their car - might look at you funny.

8. Call people and force them to talk to you. This only works if people answer. You look less odd.

7. Splash water in your face. It feels amazing, and it wakes you up. Drinking water also wakes you up, especially cold water.

6. Ice cream. McDonalds, Dairy Queen, the bars from gas stations, anything will do. Instant sugar. It kinda wakes the body up because of the cold. It's a quick thing, though.

5. Coffee. Or espresso. Chug it! Or drink it slowly... savoring is best. Those buggers are expensive.

4. Apples. They have the sugar of coffee and ice cream, but they take longer for your body to digest because of the fiber, and they're healthy.

3. Cold air. Just turn on the air or roll the window down. The problem is when you get cold and wanna turn the heat on. That'll put you right back to sleep, I promise.

2. LOUD music. Combined with cold air and coffee or apples, this is amazing.

And number one is:

1. Imagine how satisfying it would be to punch/kick/beat up someone you're mad at... or detest. This works unless your forceful punches make you shake the car. And then the terror of going off the road wakes you up. You win both ways!

Cough Medicine

My throat is currently on fire, with little bits missing here and there. My voice comes and goes as it pleases, without rhyme or reason that I can see. Penance for last night's activities, perhaps. That's when it all started. (Well, that's not true. That's when my voice decided to start joining in with everything else.)

Even knowing that I was sick, for some reason, I waited four days before going to the doctor. Notice how that never makes things better? (The waiting, I mean. Though in this case...)

I tried things and there to make my cough, sore throat, earache, headache, and overall body aches go away. Things worked. For a time. The problem is once they stopped working, pain came back in full force.

The coughing at night is keeping me awake. I can't sleep over the noise of myself dying. I suppose it's a survival thing. I'd rather sleep.

At the doctor's office today, I was eventually given two prescriptions. Prescription one: little green pill, designed to force me to cough up the mucus, and forcing the bronchitis to go away. Whiskey does the same thing. Well, the pill is also an antibiotic, which I suppose is something. Something to stay away from. (My family doctor hated them... prescribed them out only as a last resort.)
Prescription two: Cough syrupy stuff. It's in a hot pink bottle (which surprised me), but the syrup stuff is yellow (also surprising). It's thick and doesn't taste nasty (most surprising). The doctor prescribed it to me, promising that if I took it before bed, it would make me stop coughing so I could get some sleep. However, I've been coughing nonstop since taking this med, and, needless to say, sleep has alluded me.

I mean, you try sleeping while you're coughing so hard your whole body is moving with it, while it tears out your throat, burns in your chest, and makes your ears want to explode. (The perk to all this ickiness? I think I won't be going to work tomorrow.)