don't read this. seriously.
it's really long and rambly and mostly unedited cuz it's meant as a writing exercise. if you read past this point and are disappointed (which i mean, honestly, this is my blog so when doesn't that happen when you read this? you're clearly a glutton for punishment.) don't blame me. cuz you can't say i didn't warn you.
...really? you're still reading? you're serious about this? ok, your funeral. or well, perhaps your mild headache. this writing isn't up to par for killing. (it's not even epically bad! it's just monotonous pablum. terrible right? WHY are you reading this?) ok, here it is:
“I feel really crappy today.” I texted my mother when she asked me how I was today. That was around lunch time on Friday. I started coughing more and more. I started feeling fatigued. My awesome caffeinated cocoa, even spiked with coffee, was having only a marginal effect. There was only 30 minutes of work left. I could make another super-caffeinated cocoa coffee to get me through it, or just go home. While i was confident the cocoa coffee would work, I was less confident about surviving my drive home afterward. I wasn’t confident about making the drive home now.
Somehow I made it home, coughing all the way. Mom had dinner on the table. I said I just wanted to go to bed. She said, “Well, come eat first.” She could probably already tell that once I was in bed I was staying there. I listened to her and sat at the counter. Steak, rice and green beans. I wanted fresh squeezed lemon and ginger. I was too fatigued to get it, so I just ate it as it was. In retrospect, I could have just asked for it, but my foggy brain couldn’t work that out at the time. I changed my clothes and went to bed. And slept.
My skin was at that extra-sensitive level you only feel when you’re sick, which makes you super susceptible to cold and barely able to handle the feeling of your soft blankets grazing your skin. And with the fever you don’t want blankets at all because it’s too hot and any clothing feels like too much clothing. (I am VERY pro-clothing, so this is a very strong statement.) But you’re feeling these things simultaneously, so you don’t know which impulse to follow first. I realized my feet were burning up. Like I felt I might die if I didn’t do something to cool down my feet immediately. So I took off my socks and stuck my feet out from under the blankets, exposing them to the cool air. Even so, it took a minute for my feet to cool to a tolerable temperature. When they did and I could stand to keep them under the blankets again, I felt one of my feet touch my leg and noticed how warm it was. My feet are very rarely warm. Poor circulation, whatever. My feet are just cold. Even when they’re warm they’re still noticeably colder than the rest of my body. This is how I knew I had a fever. I turned over and went back to sleep.
My eyes felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. Everything had a dull ache in it. It didn’t so much ache to move as just ached to be. Just having the limb meant it was going to hurt. Moving didn’t hurt more, it was just a lot of effort. My brain was too groggy to read a book and I don’t think my eyes could take the effort. Besides, sitting up and finding a comfortable position to read in was impossible, seeing as no position was comfortable. I tried to check twitter. Between long heavy blinks, strained eyes took in the status updates. Chris Hardwick would be on The Soup. I like Chris Hardwick. I turned it on. I propped up my pillows so that they would support me in a sitting position. I forced my eyes to look at the screen. It took all my energy. When I blinked, I kept my eyes closed for as long as it was possible for you to still be considered watching something. I closed my eyes during the commercial breaks, listening intently for when the show came back. I didn’t watch and process in the usual sense. I kind of just absorbed. Chris was only on for a moment to plug his show. Literally hopped into the frame, talked for a moment, then hopped back out of the frame. And the show ended a few minutes after that. I lay back and closed my eyes, exhausted from the effort of watching the show. I was disappointed. So much effort for only a moment. I would have tweeted a complaint, but I knew he would literally feel bad. (on his podcast he always talks about feeling bad after reading stuff like that.) And I already felt bad enough. No need to cause more misery. I slept for a few more hours. I remember waking up a few times. Talking to my mom, or rather telling her I couldn’t talk because it would just make me cough. I found I also couldn’t talk because my throat perpetually needed cleared and my voice was nearly gone. It took so long and so much effort just to prepare my throat enough to get a few words out, and then I’d have a coughing fit. Prep, half a phrase, coughing fit, prep, finish phrase, coughing fit. Exhausting. Also, it’s hard to remember what the hell you’re even talking about when it takes over a minute to get a sentence out. Also, my mind really couldn’t handle a full conversation at the moment. I could take in information, with effort, but processing that information and coming up with a response was just asking too much. I also remember my mom giving me vitamins. And then I slept. Whatever else happened until noon on Saturday I was not conscious to report.
Despite needing to pee like mad, my body was not motivated. Only the knowledge that I didn’t want to pee on myself got me into the bathroom. And even then, just barely.
All I wanted was to get back into bed. Part of my brain wanted to be awake and think and do things. Everything else wanted to go back to sleep.
“I have movies we can watch!” said my mother. Movies, at this point, were far to much effort. First I would have to keep my eyes open for the full hour and a half. (A thirty minute show put me out for 2 hours.) Second I would have to follow the story. (Not sure I was capable of that.) And finally I would have to process the whole thing. (That was asking too much.)
Instead I listened to an audio book about vampires, zombies and ghouls. It was like lots of books. Not great writing, but an interesting enough story. Ya know, like everything I write. Like whatever I’ll end up with if I ever finish any of the stuff I’m writing. I nearly wrote the word “novel” but, jesus, that sounds pretentious. Good writers write novels. I’m not a good writer.
Whatever it is that I write, assuming I finish it, I suppose it will be called a novel. But I won’t like it. If you notice things like this at all then you will have noticed that I’ve capitalized my sentences and my “I’s.” Ya know, used proper grammar. There is a reason for this.
Part of this blog is just my blog and you’ll read it and hopefully be mildly entertained. (Too ambitious??? Sorry.) But part of this blog is a writing exercise. You may notice the tense change and repetitive language. And I usually correct things like that in my blogs. But right now I don’t care cuz it’s a writing exercise.
So anyway, that book was what? 5? 8 hours long? And I just laid in bed and listened to it. And I was glad I had it. Because doing anything else would have been exhausting.
At some point I logged into Skype and I got to talk to Clive. I was hoping I’d get to talk to Clive, but thought it was too late. (Time zones.) So that was good. I’ll have to look at the time stamp later to find out when that actually happened.
I think I kept pretty good track of what day it was. Despite everything all kind of melding together. I can’t really tell now when one thing or another happened, but at the time that it happened I knew what day it was. I knew when it was Sunday. I couldn’t really remember everything that had gone on Saturday, but I knew that it was Sunday.
I also got to catch up on some of my YouTube watching. By this time it was Sunday and I could keep my eyes open with little to no effort. For some reason when I would watch videos by Lydia or Hank, they would freeze. This is especially odd because when I would watch other videos on the same channel (John’s videos or the other ladies of 7NAP) I didn’t have a problem. This would happen to me on my old internet connection as well. Which can only leave me with one conclusion. YouTube is trying to prevent me from enjoying the goodness contained in both Hank and Lydia videos. And granted, there is more goodness in those videos than it should probably be legal to allow, but John and the other 7NAP ladies have some pretty fantastic videos as well and I had no trouble viewing theirs. So Lydia (who I know will eventually read this), Hank (who I know will never read this), there’s a conspiracy. I don’t know how far the conspiracy goes. I don’t know if YT is preventing just me from enjoying your awesome, or if other people are suffering too, but I just thought I should let you know that it exists.
So now I’m still a bit fatigued and still coughing and still blowing my nose and still on a bunch of meds and cough drops, but at least I’m not still fatigued, coughing, blowing my nose, on a constant stream of meds and cough drops while trying to be at work. That would definitely suck WAY more!
While I could probably think of more things to ramble about, or more details I could add, I won’t. The medicine is making me drowsy. This sentenced is being typed with my eyes closed. I literally can’t be bothered to look at what I’m writing anymore.
Oh, and by the way, especially having taken so long to get around to blogging, I am absolutely horrified at the thought of BEDA. Which starts in 4 DAYS! wheeeee!
