Cough drop candy.

I’m not super big into vitamins.  I realize that they are important, but I tend to take them in waves.  I’ll remember and advise myself, Brie, be healthy, and not miss a single day for weeks.  And then, I’ll skip a couple doses, start feeling guilty, and slowly it will trickle off into nothing.  Of course, as I packed for Italy, I was in a healthy mood and counted out the exact number of vitamins to last until December 20^th, my last day in Florence.  I sealed them in Ziploc bags, wrote down their names in Sharpies (so the airport wouldn’t be suspicious, I guess), and packed all five pounds of them in my bag.  Five pounds.  And now, I’m here.  And my guilty conscience is nagging at the back of my mind to not skip a day.  Because here’s the problem: Vitamins are expensive and heavy.  If I don’t take the vitamins everyday, I have to transport the extras back to the states.  And that leaves less room for the art supplies and books I’ve had to purchase.  So I’m slowly wading my way through the sea of pills, hoping that possibly, for some reason, I miscounted. 

And after vitamins, I am left with medicine.  I brought along a compact first aid kit with band-aids, Neosporin, Ibuprofen, Sudafed, some Emergen-Cs, cough drops/throat lozengers, etc.  I started to get the beginnings of a sore throat a few days ago (I think it might be the air, everyone smokes), and sat there, debating whether I should take some meds.  Normally at home, I tend to wait for a while until I make the decision to self-medicate.  My general attitude is to tough it out or wait until I’m as sick as a dog.  But, again, that first aid kit took up a good deal of room in my suitcase.  So I’ve been happily eating my cough drops like candy, and am relieved to say that the sore throat has almost completely disappeared.  Who knows?  They might have just done the trick.