Well, Happy New Year to you too, bronchitis. I squeaked through 2004 without catching the plague, but it seems to be catching up to me now. I spent the whole long weekend holed up in my house, too crummy feeling to even make the drive over to Cowboy’s and share the sick with him, which would only have been fair, since he’s the one who gave it to me.

But when you’re sick, you want your own house, your own bed, and your own movies to pick from. I didn’t even feel up to playing the kids’ video games, but I did watch a lot of my old favorite movies and got a lot of reading done.

I had to get dressed on Sunday and go pay the rent and buy some food, because sadly, this isn’t the kind of sick that makes me not want to eat. What is has done though, is make me crave homemade soup, so I bought the fixings and roasted a chicken last night. I made the broth too, so I’m set up for the rest of the week.

I dragged my butt in to work today, no doubt to the delight of my coworkers (but I’m at least sequestering myself in my own office) because I had to bring the truck in to the shop. I may be sick, but my transmission is sicker, and I had to get it taken care of before the warranty ran out. It’s making a horrible grinding noise that I can even hear over my stuffed-up ears, and it’s not wanting to shift. Bad transmission, bad.

Murphy’s Law being what it is, I suspect the dealership is going to find something totally unrelated to the complete rebuild they did in August, and try to stick me with the bill again. I don’t think so, Sparky. It didn’t grind even before I took it in the first time, and my mechanic said the fluid was filled too full after they rebuilt it, so I’m laying all the damage on them. I’ve hardly even driven it since that work; I only towed a trailer once this year, for crying out loud.

But I will be stuck with the rental car bill. Cowboy sold the green truck, and since it’s his busy season, I can’t gank one of his other work trucks. So I went and rented me a car. It’s not a bad car, I guess, as cars go. I think it’s a Toyota. But it’s been so long since I’ve driven a car that it feels completely foreign to me.

I don’t like the feeling of having to fold myself into and out of the thing. I get nervous seeing the road rushing by right there out of the corners of my eyes. I really don’t like seeing the undersides of trucks at stop signs. No wonder car-driving people don’t like SUVs. You can’t see anything around them. It’s a perspective I’d largely forgotten. I feel like a clown in a tiny little box, and it’s not like they gave me a Mini Cooper or anything, just a Toyota. But I’m too cheap to upgrade to a truck, although if I knew for sure that the tranny work would take a week, I would have just rented a work truck from an equipment place for cheaper.

Fortunately, it’s too rainy to have much going on, so I won’t have to take this tiny little thing four-wheeling. Sure, it’s a dirt road to check my well, but I think it can handle that. If I do make it to Cowboy’s, he may have to pull me out of the driveway. Last year absolutely required four wheel drive, but he’s rocked it since, so it might be OK.

I may finish the week with massive feelings of inferiority though. I don’t like feeling so small, and the inner ear infection doesn’t help my perspective.