fox

Spring is here, which means the past two nights I've taken a dose of sudafed before I go to bed, because I find that I wake up better when I've been able to breathe while I've been sleeping. Right? But yesterday I was full of mysterious energy, and today I am so full of mysterious energy that I'm almost (but not quite) vibrating, and on reflection I think going from no sudafed for months and months to a full dose two nights in a row may have been a tactical mistake, and maybe tonight I'll only take half a dose, because the last thing I need is to, you know, EXPLODE. And when you're rushing and rushing and glad someone you were about to call calls you and then you hurry to get your lunch before the next thing but it turns out there's no way to make the microwave heat your lunch faster and you start thinking "I never felt as good as how I do right now, except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day when I felt the way that I do right now, right now, RIGHT NOW", it occurs to you that it's probably a good time to cut back.

I'm still thinking about calling the doctor re: the pressure in my right ear, and my face is kind of flaking off in a sort of alarming fashion, but I am no longer a bundle of aches and shivers, so on balance I guess that's all right.

NyQuil helped, but not enough. I am still full of flu-like symptoms, so I have called off work. I am about to go back to bed. I trust I will feel *well* when I get up again, dammit.

Snow day today, which made me glad, because I wanted so badly not to go to work and instead get back in bed and stay there. Have now also been told there's no penalty for missing rehearsal tonight, on account of the weather, so although I have a section-mate who was willing to give me a lift (and save me digging my car out where it has been snowed on and plowed in), I've actually just called off. The headache and sore throad and pressure in my ears are No Good and I'd rather kick them and go in Wednesday and Friday than give them to half the section and not feel any better myself.

Will spend some time tonight with the score and the recording, instead. :-]

It is wrong to be sneezing with allergy-like frequency when there's a half-inch of solid ice on the ground outside.

That is all. (For now.)

doc: Stiffness in the neck, huh? Does that hurt?
me: A little bit.
doc: How about this?
me: No, that's fine.
doc: This?
me: Ow.
doc: Honey, that's just a stiff neck.

doc: Looks like the right ear's infected, which explains the lymph nodes.
me: I'm glad I wasn't hallucinating that.
doc: (laughing) No, you're okay. It's good that you came in.
me: I try not to be that patient, you know, where I've heard of something so I'm sure I've got it.
doc: I do wish more people thought that way? But it's better to come see us.
me: I mean, I just want to have a sense of what's worth worrying about and what's not.
doc: (sternly) Please don't minimize your own experience and concerns.

doc: So your lymph nodes are from the ear infection, and the stiff neck is from stress. Do you sleep okay?
me: I thought I did.
doc: I'm going to give you an antibiotic and a muscle relaxant, and if you've got a nice boyfriend, have him massage that tension for you. And if you don't, let me know, we'll get you one. That's another service we provide. I'm joking, of course.
me: Wouldn't that be something, though, if insurance could do that?
doc: Listen, you're not kidding. But seriously. You've got to try to relax.
me: In this town?

In conclusion: I have flexeril and amoxicillin, and a prescription to have a boy rub my neck. And two weeks' worth of yogurt. Stonyfield Farms' "yo baby" apple flavor tastes more like apple custard than anything else. I guess I should have expected that from something that is both apple-flavored and creamy.

Doing better, but not well enough to Deal With Things. Sort of ready for the week (hell, the month and therefore the year) to be over. Dog running around upstairs sounds a lot like the rain on the windowpanes at the moment, with the result that I don't know how hard it is raining. Heh.

I came home from work early yesterday to lie down, as I said, and slept for three hours. Had to go to curling, but I went to bed almost as soon as I got home, and slept like a rock -- but not before e-mailing to work and saying I might not be in today.

Have been checking in by e-mail periodically today, but also spent most of the day asleep, and the lymph nodes in my throat and neck are swollen, and my temperature is a little high. I am choosing to focus on the fact that I'm breathing clearly and not coughing (much), and consider it good.

I'm really not hungry at all, but I should probably have some soup or something. Sigh. (ow.)

So you get up, you continue to feel terrible, you recall that your supervising manager-type person said "take a sick day if you need one", you e-mail that you're not coming in, and you go back to bed.

That's all fine and well, and you sleep for another two and a half, three hours, but here's the problem:  first of all, you eventually reach a point where you're through sleeping so there's no way to get comfortable, but you try anyway, and you're too warm, so you throw off your blanket, and within a minute you're shivering, so you pull up your blanket, and within a minute you're overheated; and secondly, by the time you do get up, you've of course missed your breakfast and you're getting close to missing your morning snack, and when you cut your daily calories pretty fine to start with, that's just setting yourself up for even more sluggishness and lethargy.

I did drag some clothes on and migrate to the couch.  Soon I will in fact eat something.  What I'd really like best, though, would be for the pressure in my ears to go away.  Any time.

It is raining.  Our bit of Hanna is here.

My cold is still here, but not nearly as bad as before.  Hurrah.

(I did have an unpleasant dream as I woke up this morning, in which my eight-year-old cousin had in her curiosity caused some minor damage to a Christmas ornament, and my grandmother was really awful about it, which really upset the kid, and then my grandmother accused her of faking up her tears to get more sympathy from all of us who had come in to see what the kid was crying about.  There had been some sentimental-value explanation for why the ornament was so important to my grandmother, but no excuse for the way she was treating my cousin, and I don't really want to think about it much more because it makes me unhappy.  My hope is that describing it will have got it out of my mind so I don't need to keep rehashing it.)

I have Great Plans for today.  I shall paint the guest room, possibly touch up some bits of the living room if I think I can stand it, even do the bathroom if I'm feeling really ambitious.  (I predict I will do the first two of these.  We know me.)  I shall definitely clean (incl. sweeping up loose hair, a problem that has to be dealt with more frequently when there's no carpet for it to stick to) and take out the trash.  I should also do laundry, but anything I took out of the dryer would get wet again between the laundry room and my door.  Might have to do it anyway.  And I may go out to acquire a couple more frames to hang things up with, possibly a file cabinet if I think the bank balance will support it (yesterday was payday, after all).

This is a kind of crazy ambition I tend to notice in myself when I'm coming off being sick.  We'll see how much of it gets done.  (I also have [mumble] skeins of yarn that need winding -- not more than half a dozen, I think, but, dudes, right? -- and at least two colorways that I'm still hunting for, so I may go down to ATS and try to find what I'm looking for, and see if they'll let me wind this stuff I didn't buy from them while I'm there.  Which they've done in the past, because they are awesome like that.)

Has it been a really long time since I've had a cold?  I've been surprised all day, as if I'd forgotten, how exhausting it is.  (I see where I had the office-mate's summer cold a couple of weeks ago, but it was specifically the non-head-stuffy kind, which is exactly what this is.  And this is the tiring part.  Urgh.)

I have the cold my office-mate successfully fought off.  My nose is not particularly stuffed up, but otherwise I am a bundle of fun:  sinus pressure, which normally I could deal with, and aches in most muscles and every joint.  Called off and went back to bed.  I'm awake now and my arms and my head still feel really heavy.  I may take a nap soon.

ellen_fremedon and sanj, let me know if you want me to stay away from the skiffy gang; otherwise, I'll drag myself over this evening and mind my business in the corner.

Migrainey goodness.

[huddles in the dark]