Warning: Author Doped Up On Nyquil

I have a cold that began last Monday morning. It then morphed into a migraine, slid straight into the flu before returning once again to a snotty, coughing cold.  I think I am on the mend although numerous people today thought it kind to tell me how awful I sounded.  Yes, I sound this awful and I'm feeling better.  Thank you.  These days when I feel  a cold coming on I get a certain kind of panic that I feel extremely bitter I need to experience.  You see-when I get a cold I want nothing more than to curl up in bed with a box of tissues and a death grip around a bottle of Nyquil.  Sort of like a female version of this:

The trouble is, and the reason for the panic, is that the meth lab fools have ruined a perfectly good thing for the world (besides bringing down neighborhoods, endangering children and all of that type of stuff).  Several years ago Nyquil was pulled off the shelves since its ingredients could be used to make meth.  Nyquil smartened up quickly to the fact that their product wasn't prominently available on shelves and they reformulated the brand to leave out the meth loving ingredients.  Trouble is--there's a reason I like to snuggle up to my bottle of Nyquil...because it's good and it works.  Don't go messing around with a perfect original.  Things were fine for a while.  My local CVS in Bath stocked the good stuff behind the pharmacy counter.  You just walked up, showed your photo ID, they entered you into the meth tracking computer and you were on your way with product in hand.  However, I have been having more and more trouble finding stores that carry the original version.  That brings on the aforementioned panic.  Last fall, I wandered the streets of Portland desperately seeking my Nyquil, sniffly and coughing only to wind up empty handed and with this pale impostor:

Note that there are only three active ingredients and none of them is really long and starts with a "P".  The long "P" ingredient is the meth trouble causing one that has been removed.  After I recovered from last fall's cold I started casually checking out the cold aisle whenever I happened to be in a drugstore.  To date I have not found the original Nyquil.  I'm not sure if it's because the pharmacies don't want to waste their precious shelf space which seems to be solely dedicateded to contraband Sudafed or because it's simply not being made anymore.  However, I did manage to find a Walgreens's brand that sports this fantastic list of ingredients:

So, my quest continues as Walgreen's brand is probably just as good but let's face it, there are some things that you don't go generic with and my Nyquil is clearly one of them.  As a side note-I thought this blog was hhysterical and proves I may be crazy but in a completely different way than this person:

What Would Happen...25 Bottles of Nyquil

A Very Soggy Relay For Life

This past weekend my team participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life.  This is an overnight 14 hour, rain or shine event.  Well, this year it rained the entire night with it absolutely pouring rain from the start until about 9pm.  Luckily my friends and I can have fun in any situation and are definitely not fair weathered friends!  We even managed to celebrate my mom's upcoming birthday with ice cream cake.  We were all cold, wet and freezing and still managed to enjoy that ice cream cake!

Here are some photo highlights from our night.


Our team participated in the Team Banner Lap.  We all gathered around our cool banner and as we walked onto the field the DJ called out "Here come Cacklin Hens 4 A Cure!"  It was a nice moment.  We then walked a couple of wet laps around the track with the banner.

The real troopers of the afternoon are below.  My mom and Ken arrived early on and helped with our camp set up, participated in the Survivor/Caregiver ceremony, had dinner and then when you knew they really, really just wanted to jump in their car with the heated seats...they stayed a little while longer so we could surprise mom with birthday cake, a card and balloon.  They did a great job and I know it was kind of crazy and miserable at times but it's the spirit that counts!  

There are theme laps every hour.  We missed a few in the beginning because it was raining so hard and we were so busy with trying to set up camp in the rain.  As midnight approached Jezzy and I were sitting in our screen tent discussing that it wasn't raining and the glow in the dark/neon lap was coming up.  There is also an 80's lap at 3am but we didn't want to chance missing that lap.  So, we threw on our 80's outfits, added our many glo sticks and hit the track.

Everyone got a little punchy around 2am. I don't even remember what I was laughing about here but it must have been good! Everyone stayed up all night long with no sleep and we took only one brief trip to the car to sit and warm up. The best news is that we raised an amazing amount of money. With only 6 team members we raised somewhere between $1,300-1,400 and made many memories.