My panacea of choice: cold-removal implements and an angry email

I am sick sick sick. I’m on my fourth day of it and seem to be on the rebound though now what started as a headcold with a sinus compression headache so bad I couldn’t even force my ears to pop, has moved down into my chest and I am coughing up all sorts of lovely green bits. As I lie in my bed, too weak to move, I listen to my audiobook about life in ancient Egypt, written by one of my favorite mystery writers.

I also imagine the perfect cures to my truly disgusting cold. Am I thinking up novel antibiotics? Nope. I don’t imagine medicines. I imagine tools. Mostly different kinds of hooked scrub brushes. I think about a softer version of a car jack that I would use to crank my jaws all the way open so they lay flat on their hinges, then a pair of rubber-tipped pliers which would grip the hangy ball in the back of my throat (I know, I know, it is called a uvula, bleh!) and gently unscrew it from its base, lift it out of my mouth and place it in a shallow basin full of warm water and antibacterial soap (in my scrubby fantasy, the soap smells like Irish Spring – fresh and disinfectanty at the same time). Disembodied heavy duty rubber gloves, like the kind used to handle uranium, gently but firmly attack the equally disembodied hangy ball with a series of flex-headed toothbrushes with the brand new bristles of the softest grade until the hangy ball is thoroughly disinfected and practically glitters with cleanliness. At which point high intensity waterpicks, like at the dentist’s office, spray down the rest of my mouth and throat, suctioning as they go, as the hangyball is carefully reattached.

I have also come up with innovative cures for cleaning out my sinuses and straining the gunk from my lungs but I’ll spare you.

In addition to these clever, if somewhat redundant, imaginings, I have also watched quite a few movies, though these are more difficult since they require me to breathe and listen at the same time. This proved nearly impossible in the case of Inglorious Basterds. After several months of wanting to see it, I finally scored a bootleg DVD for about $4 only to find that it was filmed in a RUSSIAN movie theater rather than in an English-speaking country. The company that puts out this particular brand of bootlegs, usually pretty high quality, adds Arabic subtitles, but only to English dialogue (I assume it is like one English and Arabic speaking guy alone in his Russian basement).

Thus, in my copy of Inglorious Basterds, which includes stretches of French and German sometimes up to fifteen minutes long, only the English conversations are subtitled: in Arabic and Russian. All the place names and dates that act as headings before each scene are in Cyrillic writing and are not subtitled in Arabic, which I may have actually been able to understand since foreign place names are usually transcribed phonetically into Arabic. Therefore, besides the few scenes where it is just the Basterds talking among themselves in English, the only part I understood is when Brad Pitt and two other Americans pretend to be Italians and get out-Italianed by one of the German officers (I don’t think that ruins anything for anyone, you can kind of see it coming).

This whole pathetic sick weekend actually started with great potential. I got an invite for a job interview on Friday at 1:00 East Coast time, which would have been 8:00pm here. I could already feel myself getting sick by about 3 but made great efforts to tough it out. After a day trip I had already planned before the interview was scheduled (and, in hindsight, should have skipped since it turned out to run from 7am to nearly 5pm and didn’t include lunch or even time for lunch), I picked up my computer at my apartment and turned right around to hit the internet café for some research into the position and the organization. The org is one I’ve followed for awhile, an anti-sexual violence non-profit in D.C. The position was basically what I’m doing now, only with less responsibility and since it required only a B.A. and 2 years of general office experience, I suspect it wouldn’t pay a living wage for D.C. but I wanted the phone interview to find out.

I realized even before we scheduled the interview that the interviewer was getting cold feet when I explained the time zone difference, for the purpose of scheduling, and she seemed surprised and dismayed I was in Egypt, a fact I made quite clear in my cover letter. She told me she was hoping to fill the position within two weeks and I said my travel plans were quite flexible…anything to get to the interview and find out about the salary (by my current calculus of poverty, a job that paid in the high 20K’s in D.C. wouldn’t be worth leaving my middle class salary in Egypt for…but a job in the high 30’s in D.C. would put me closer to paying at least SOMETHING on my loans, and would therefore be worth moving earlier than I’d intended).

So we arranged to talk at 1pm on Friday, I did my pre-interview research and made some notes on good answers to questions I could reasonably expect (like why I was interested in leaving my job in Egypt after just a couple months, etc.), and then I waited for her call (despite metnioning twice in our email conversation that I’d be willing to call her and absorb the international charges and the difficulty of calling internationally), she did not give me her phone number. Although I Googled her before the interview time and jotted down her number just in case we were disconnected or something, I assumed her decision not to give me her number meant she would call me. I waited and waited. At 8:15 I was both really sick (the cold had come on in a rush at the end of the day, my nose stuffing and throat hurting and I was managing the pain and congestion with medicine until I could collapse in bed after the interview) and really anxious and I dialed her number for the first time.

Straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I waited another five minutes, then called my dad at home in Oregon to ask him to check my email (I don’t have email in my apartment here) to make sure that she hadn’t written to postpone (ah, my naïveté) the interview and also to confirm that the time zones were as I thought they were. I was correct on the time, she was over twenty minutes late, and had not written an email in the hour between my internet research and our scheduled appointment. At 8:30, a half-hour past our appointed time, I called got voicemail again, and left a message, repeating my phone number with country code, and offering to reschedule if something had come up. At 8:45, I called again, got voicemail again, and hung up again without leaving a message. My forehead had compressed into my skull and was getting friendly with my brain by this time and I was keeping my nasal passages open by wedging toothpicks into them like they do on cartoons (kidding). I needed to sleep but was too freaked out! What was going on? Had she forgotten the interview? How was that possible? I’d written back confirming the time at what would have been around 9am East Coast time that morning so it would have been among first emails she received on coming into the office. Maybe she didn’t come in that day and that’s why I kept getting her voicemail? But why would she ask me to interview at 1pm and then not come into the office without letting me know?

At 9:05pm, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. My body and my nerves were spent. I called, got voicemail immediately again, and left a second message stating that I was still interested in the position, knew she was on a deadline and would therefore be available for another couple hours (I somehow thought that if she called just after I’d fallen asleep the adrenaline would help me rally enough to get through the interview) if she still wanted to do the interview that day. I said if she wanted to reschedule, I’d make myself available anytime, just shoot me an email. Finally, I collapsed into sleep, breathing gape-mouthed and chapped-lipped for twelve straight hours (after which, I brushed my teeth IMMEDIATELY).

I slept all day Saturday, then called in sick to work on Sunday and slept all day that day too. Late Sunday afternoon, I called my mom, who dutifully checked my email (I can’t believe my parents put up with me like they do) and reported that my would-have-been interviewer wrote that she had just received the message I had sent at about 2:30 on Friday afternoon East Coast Time (so I guess she wasn’t in the office?!) and that unfortunately she’d decided she needed to fill the position by this Wednesday and that she would require an in-person interview. Therefore, I was not eligible for the position (which she never should have scheduled since if she’d read my cover letter, which she clearly didn’t, there was never any question I am IN EGYPT) but my resume and cover letter looked great and she has a good feeling that good things are headed my way.

I of course went ballistic and sent her an email today about how it was her prerogative to decide to interview only in-person candidates but that once she made that decision she had a responsibility to inform me by email or phone before our appointment and that her failure to do so showed a lack of professional courtesy and consideration for my time and my feelings. I did not say that I totally blame her for making me sick, but if they ever develop a hangy-ball transplant surgery, I am getting it and leaving my grime-covered discarded hangy-ball in her bed like the horse head in The Godfather. Booyah.