Songs

Gone Viral

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I’ve always had a great time at Disneyland, so it’s sad and unsettling to hear that over 40 of California’s 60 or so cases of measles can be traced to the Anaheim theme park. Apparently there are more people walking around the U.S. who aren’t vaccinated, and at crowded scenes like Disneyland they’re encountering others, including some from overseas, who also haven’t been vaccinated.

But you’re on vacation and preoccupied with fun, so the only potential infection that comes to mind is the musical earworm – a song that gets lodged in your head.

And once you’ve got this in you, it can become a handy device to remember the symptoms to look out for.

It’s a runny nose, its a stale, dry cough
it’s a crimson throat. Every swallow’s tough.
It’s a fever that’s light
And you just don’t feel right
You’ve got mousles after all.

Yes, it’s mousles after all.
Caught it off a castle wall!
Left by Hans from Niedernhall!
It’s a small, small world!

It’s conjunctivitis. You want a nap.
It’s some blotchy rashes that overlap.
Feeling pretty obscene, wish you’d had your vaccine.
You’ve got mousles after all.

You’ve got Mousles after all!
Sat in mucous at Toad Hall.
Shouldn’t be here with y’all.
It’s a small, small world!

What did you bring home from vacation?

59 thoughts on “Gone Viral”

  2. Good morning. Many times I need a vacation from taking a vacation when I get home. I usually enjoy taking vacations. However, I am often happy to return home from a vacation and in need of rest due to the stress and strain that seems be part of most of my get-a-ways. The need to recover from going on a trip is what I frequently bring home from my trips.

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  3. Morning all. I’ve never brought an illness home with me, but Young Adult and I do have an impressive collection of refrigerator magnets from all over. I do also have a big It’s a Small World coffee mug. I’ve never thought much about the song when I use this mug, but I’m worried that I will from now on!

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  4. what is this vacation you speak of?

    Last time we actually took one was 2009- we saw the news Michael Jackson had died. The one before that was in 2005- the Pope died while we were on that.

    I sort of feel a personal responsibility to just staycation.

    Actually, even a staycation would be nice.

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  5. New Question

    I would like to nominate our cat for the cat litter test trials. How can that be done?

    It seems like the cat litter companies are always coming out with “new and Improved” varieties. How are the improved products discovered?

    Couldn’t a cat get paid for that kind of work?

    Renee’s husband Chris

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    2. l once bought litter at Target selling for half the price of the brand l’d been using. l soon learned why; it clumped into hard clay and had to be manually scraped off the bottom of the litter tray. l’m now paying far more to buy Tidy Cat’s new “lightweight” litter. Half the weight, but 30% more in price. They get you coming or going, Chris!

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  7. Husband sort of goofy this morning-we are getting ready to spend the weekend in Fargo and I hope all we bring back is the things on our shopping list. Daughter had pneumonia last week and son has pink eye and is quarantined home until he has been on antibiotics for 24 hours. We sure don’t want to bring either of those maladies back with us.

    A friend of mine took her elderly mother to the eye doctor the other day and while they were in the waiting room, an elderly couple, friends from when her parents farmed, sat down next to them. In quite loud tones “Victor” told friend and mother he was there because the dehorning paste he had put on the patch of skin cancer on his nose didn’t work, and he might have got in in his eye and it could cause blindness. Friend’s mother said, in equally loud tones “Victor, you dumb ass!” Friend said everybody in the waiting room was quite entertained with the conversation.

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  8. I returned from my trip to China with an upper respiratory infection so severe that I was sick for weeks and lost 90% of my hearing in one ear.

    Otherwise, it’s been mostly memories, tans, and the odd souvenir.

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  9. We hope to bring back Turkish olive oil, Tikka marinade and other things from the Indian grocery store, wine we can’t get here, (I don’t think any have little animals on the labels), Bulgarian Feta, snow boots for me, and an instant-read thermometer.

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    1. I’m sure you know, Renee, that you shouldn’t put some of the stuff you plan to bring back in your carry on luggage and will need to put it in luggage that you don’t carry on. I forgot about not putting wine in carry on luggage and had to leave behind a bottle of wine when the security people found it in luggage I was carrying.

      At a time before 9/11 I brought back a big metal gardening tool from Bulgaria in my carry on luggage. I would probably have to answer a lot of questions if I tried to get through airport security with something like that today.

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        1. If you fly internationally, you can bring liquor bought in the duty free shops into the cabin. It’s not an issue of amount of liquid, but a fear of what that liquid might be.

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    2. Renee, I’m so grateful that I don’t have to drive very far for those things. How is Bulgarian Feta different from Greek Feta?

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    3. For what it’s worth olive oil had a bad year this year and will be in short supply and expensive starting soon lasting for 1 year
      Bad growing season in Italy and spain

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  10. When I was 15 and in London with a theater group, I brought home pierced ears (Mom hadn’t wanted me to get my ears pierced and written permission was required back here). Probably would have been better to wait because I had a heck of a time getting them to heal, likely also related to my youth and inability to recognize I should keep to real silver or gold in my very sensitive ears. Sigh. Also brought home some great memories from that trip, including seeing Brian Blessed on stage (and briefly off stage before the show), performing on stage myself for lots of British kids, and the sort of silliness and amusement that only makes sense when you are 14 or 15. Also a plastic faux Bobby hat.

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  11. Vacation? What is a vacation?

    Seriously, it’s been a long time. I’ve had vacations from hell and some good ones, but they have been nonexistent for a good long while now. HOWEVER, ask me in April. Last night I just finished booking the planes and trains for a 2-week solo trip in March. I have never, ever done such a thing in my life and I’m both excited and nervous. I still have to get some airbnb places to stay and reserve a side trip by olympic bus line, but the major pieces are in place.

    Going by plane to KC to see the grandkids that I don’t see often. Then a very long train ride: Southwest Chief through the southwest (duh), change trains in LA, then up the west coast in the Coast Starlight. Stop at Portland, OR. for a couple days, then ride the train to Seattle. Then immediately bus to a town on the Olympic Peninsula for a few days. Then back to Seattle for a couple days, and then fly back here.

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        4. How about Portland, Steve? Is that also cool? Dare I ask if I can maybe crash on your couch?

          Perhaps I better ask by email so you’re not put on the spot.

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        5. I like that kind of tourist trap. The old architecture. All the arts stuff. A few small publishers started there, including Grey Wolf Press. Like getting and leaving by ferry. Like the drive over th Port Angeles.
          BTW: it now appears that I will never be going back to the Seattle area.

          Liked by 1 person

        7. Of course you’d be welcome, ljb, if you could put up with my limits here. I live in a three-room apartment. No guest bedroom. No sofa, even. Maybe you could curl up in my bathtub if we can find enough blankets.

          Seriously, though, you are welcome. I’ll do what I can to make your time in Portland enjoyable. There’s a swimming pool just steps from my door.

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  12. Light shining down into my eyes is a trigger for me. So I used to collect caps from trips. Now have about a dozen still wearable. Threw out a dozen.

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  13. In 31 years of marriage, I had just three vacations. We mostly came home with books about the areas we’d visited. We vacationed so rarely because we were poor and because our jobs (like vs’s) required a lot of travel. The erstwife flew all over the globe negotiating big publishing contracts. I drove all over the northern US and Canada with a camera and strong young legs to experience outdoor recreation that I could write about.

    What I brought home from the work travel was photography, filthy laundry and coolers filled with fish, pheasants, ducks, geese or grouse. The fish mostly went across the street to Phil, an old Norwegian neighbor. This travel was like Spin Williams’ never-ending committee meeting: I didn’t ever unpack my duffel but just washed the ripest dirty clothing and took off for my next trip.

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  15. I remember bringing home a duty-free bottle of Cointreau from a short Caribbean cruise back in ’95. Nice pair of earrings from Hawaii. The colored pencils from my 50th birthday rail adventure. Rocks from Lake Superior (for edging the flower gardens).

    Ask me at the end of May. We have just made arrangements for our trip across the pond… I’ll probably do a post about it later.

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  17. My daughter and her two teen daughter just got back from our inexpensive annual Carnival Cruise (although air fair was twice the price of the cruise!). We didn’t import any illnesses, but while on the cruise, we ventured through Cozumel. When we re-boarded the ship, Mary came down with severe food poisoning from the Cozumel taco she’d eaten. The next day, l suffered heatstroke from sunning many hour with no hydration. Other than these two illnesses, the rest of the trip was just wonderful!

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  19. Our only vacations when the kids were growing up were on the pristine North Shore near Lutsen. Only one time did we venture all the way to Canada with the intention of doing the whole circle drive around Lake Superior. When we got to customs, they refused to allow us into the country because l didn’t have my divorce decree proving that l had full custody of my kids. Bummer.

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    1. It’s that stupid seasonal merchandising. About the time it gets really cold, it becomes impossible to find things like warm mittens in a store because they are then selling spring or summer stuff. And when it gets hot and you need a pair of sandals, you’ll find winter boots and jackets in the stores.

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  22. Talk about alcohol transport makes me wonder why I didn’t have issues (or even think about) the two little bottles of limoncello I brought back from Italy in 2003. Could the liquids restriction have come into play after that?
    It’s so hard to remember what security was like before 9/11 and when ANY security kicked in before or after.
    A couple of other things I brought back from Italy – a plate from the Amalfi coast and a wood inlay piece from Sorrento. The tour guide took us to several places to learn how certain things were made (like the inlay). After our demonstrations, surprise, surprise, items were conveniently available for sale.

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  23. OT: I hope nobody would mind this entirely OT note. Many of us were intrigued by the announcement that Laura Ingalls Wilder had written memoirs for adult readers, memoirs that were reworked later for juvenile readers as the “Little House” series. Now the original writing has been published in a mammoth (almost 500 pages), highly illustrated book put out by the South Dakota Historical Society. Apparently the book astonished the publishing world; the first edition sold out almost overnight. The publisher is tiny and has never had a potent best-seller before. They are rushing a second printing into the market by March. I should have mentioned the title: Pioneer Girl.

    One reason for the hot interest in the book is the old argument about who really wrote it, Wilder or her professional writer daughter. This book clearly identified Wilder as the author.

    Today’s MinnPost has a nice article about Pioneer Girl.

    Amazon will sell Pioneer Girl again when it comes out of the boxes from the print shop. It sells for just less than $30. If several baboons would care to try something odd, I’d donate a few bucks to a fund to purchase communally owned copy that could be moved from one reader to another. It might be years, maybe many years, before library copies are available.

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    1. I just requested this at the library. I am #549, but there are 156 copies. And 17 copies on order. I have a feeling the book might be well worn by the time I get it, not to mention my reserved items tend to come at the worst possible time, and usually in batches of 6 ior more in one week. All that to say, I’d be game for a shared copy.

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  24. Most recent purchase was a small carved cat figurine from an antique shop in Iowa. I also picked up a book from a Little Free Library there. It’s since been passed along to another LFL.

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