S'not

Do you realize how much liquid leaves your body via your nose when you have a cold? I figure there are mountains of it, especially on those Kleenex box and a half days like yesterday and today for me. So, I wanted to know where all this slime comes from. I'm pretty confident it's not sitting up there day after day behind some kind of a dam just trying to break out. No, somehow it's manufactured by your body so I decided to do some research. (And yes this picture is exactly how I feel and probably how I look!)

Here you go:

- Mucus (uncountable) - also spelled mucous
(physiology) A slippery secretion from the lining of the mucous membranes.

- Mucous membrane (anatomy) A membrane which secretes mucus. It forms the lining of various body passages that communicate with the air, such as the respiratory, genitourinary, and alimentary tracts including the mouth, nasal passages, etc.

So have you ever thought about the lining of your nose "communicating with the air" and how in some way that causes spontaneous combustion into thick, gross, never-ending liquid? This is one bizarre phenomenon as far as I'm concerned. Whoever decided what part was going to do what in the body went a little sideways on this one.

So this then led me to what is a sneeze? Are you ready for this?

• To sneeze - To expel air as a reflex induced by an irritation in the nose.

So here's the question. How can a slippery secretion irritate your nose? I don't know either but that does it for me more than anything, except maybe black pepper. And no, I'm not getting sidetracked.

So here's the definition of slippery:

• Of a surface, having low friction, often due to being covered in a non-viscous liquid, and therefore hard to grip, hard to stand on without falling, etc.


• Viscous - Having a thick, sticky consistency between solid and liquid; having a high viscosity.

Is it just me or have we just come full circle? I can't think about this anymore, it's too much like a story problem and those have always shut my brain down. Suffice it to say, merely looking up a definition s'not all it's cracked up to be.