October 23 – Day 47: “So Now You Believe in Herbs?”


(Today’s title is from Pidge’s comment when I told her about my herbal shopping spree. More below.)

Getting close to the end now.

I spent most of the day in bed or just resting up. It was a shame, though, since it was a beautiful day, 70 and sunny. I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I was able to open the windows for the first time in about a week, though, so that was nice.

I finally roused myself to go and buy some drugs for my various conditions as well as printing some stuff at Kinko’s. (I was doing a video callback for a show and wanted to print the sides for Trish, who was reading opposite me.)

I hit Duane Reade and bought some Mucinex, which I hate, but which also seems to work. Then it was Kinko’s, then back to the herbal store, where I picked up some slippery elm and Manuka honey lozenges, as well as oregano oil capsules and some vile concoction with cayenne that is apparently liked by singers.

I brought all of it home, gargled with the cayenne (which actually wasn’t too bad, even if I did have some unfortunate cayenne burps later in the evening) and took a couple of the oregano capsules. The woman at the store recommended I swallow a couple, then break one open with my teeth and let the oil coat my throat. I did, and boy, was it unpleasant; like swallowing motor oil. (I’ll try it again tomorrow.)

I rested up a little more, then it was time to leave for the show. I stopped at Starbucks to get a citrus defender (figuring I could gargle with the lemon and honey in it), then it was up to the theatre. Trish was waiting for me, so I gave her the sides. We found a space in the dressing room, set up my phone, did the scenes, and were done. Went pretty well, I thought, although (obviously) it’s not my final decision.

I was pretty quiet before the show, both because I wasn’t feeling great—not bad, but not really good; just kind of there—and also because I didn’t want to overuse my voice and possibly lose it. I didn’t think I was going to, but I wasn’t sure what would come out of my mouth when I started to speak on stage.

Fortunately, when I did speak, it was all fairly normal. The performance was pretty good. I felt much better than Sunday. Maybe still not where I wanted to be, but much closer. I’m still finding new stuff, though. One interesting thing was that we got some “woo!”s at the curtain call, but I attribute that to GG having a couple of friends in the house.

I’ll admit I was a little distracted in the second act as the World Series had started. I didn’t let the game interfere with the show—I wasn’t going to come close to missing an entrance or screwing something up—but I wanted to follow the game.

There were actually some people in the bar after the show, but I wanted to watch as much of the game as I could and really felt like I should go home and get some rest—especially since I have tickets for a 1:00 matinee Wednesday. I took the 4 to Union Square, then the L the wrong way (to 8th Avenue), then the L the right way (to 1st Avenue), and stopped at Baker’s Pizza for a couple of slices, came home, watched Dave Roberts over-manage his bullpen into a loss, and started in on this.

My throat is no longer sore, but I do have what feels like nasal congestion (even though I don’t see much of anything when I blow my nose) and it feels like stuff is settling into my chest, which means I’m in for about a week of coughing—which should be interesting back- and on-stage. I hope I can find strong enough cough drops. I expect to be turning in early for the third night in a row, in the hopes of getting enough sleep to feel a little better. I can say, though, that I’m not especially looking forward to sitting through a three-hour play tomorrow—especially one with a two-hour second act.

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