I go for months and months without getting a cold. When it’s time to go to a conference, I get sick. But what makes that particularly amusing is the subject of this week’s giveaway: another cold and flu package.

If the items I’m giving away were here, I’d have been into them all by now.

I am at war with my body. That was the thought that came to me toward the end of the massage I had on Friday. Sometimes the oddest things come to me when I’m not focusing on a dozen things at once.

Oddest, and usually the most apt. When my defenses are down, the truth sneaks up.

It’s been an odd winter, uber-balmy in some areas and freaky cold in others (hello, Fairbanks!). But colds and other bugs are not choosy about where they set up shop.

With this week’s giveaway, you’ll be ready.

Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.

Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.

Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.

Each of us who attended BlogHer 2011 found a “SinuSense” in our conference bags. The best way I can describe it is a turbo neti pot. In a good way.

Made by Waterpik, it provides nasal irrigation quickly and efficiently.  You’ll want to stand over a sink when this happens, by the way, and far from relatives with cell-phone cameras and visions of YouTube stardom.

Why would you want to irrigate your nose? Because the Mayo Clinic says it is “a safe, inexpensive and easy way to relieve symptoms of nasal and sinus congestion,” that’s why.