Bitter Vanilla

It seems some wanker (clever British slang that means something bad but might not offend my American readers and thus further exacerbate my profane rating with the Blog Raters of America censors board) at Coca Cola marketing decided it would be CLEVER to throw in cans of Coke Zero “Vanilla” in my otherwise normally marked 12 pack of Coke Zero. The cans are even marked the same unless you happen to really be paying attention, which, let's face it, I wasn’t.

So here I am, with fracking shingles and all the pain associated therein, two whiny boys, and it's 90 fracking degrees outside, and I sit down to pop open a cold Coke zero.

`cept it ain't Coke Zero

It's like Coke Zero mixed with cake batter, WHICH IS FRACKING DISGUSTING.

And, yes, I did say I have shingles. (We’re working on an educated assumption and the second hand diagnosis of a friendly nurse here because after seven days there’s nothing a doctor could do for me at this point no matter what I have.) Cool huh? There’s nothing quite so grand as breaking out in a weird-arse rash that itches worse than poison ivy (I assume, having never had poison ivy) that doesn’t respond to any of the one billion creams marketed for allergic rashes and that after 7 days is still there, still itches, and occasionally burns like the fire of a thousand suns. Apparently this would also explain the spasm-inducing back and chest pain. Oh Good, because chicken-pox virus cells lying dormant in my spinal fluid suddenly reawakening to cause me pain is so much less terrifying than the heart attack I was worried about!

Too bad shingles themselves aren’t contagious or I’d spend a moment considering infecting Coca Cola packaging guys with them. However, we’ll just have to wait about two weeks to see if I managed to give Ian a full blown case of the chicken pox.