But I don't have a fever!

Happy Halloween, and Happy Birthday Jerry!

I'm laid up at home, barely functioning. I am able to be up out of bed for, oh, 10 minutes before feeling the need to crash back. I even walked up to town today, to pick up some soup at Whole Foods. I was hoping for chicken noodle. The choices were honey sweet potato (yuck) or chili. Not so much.

By the time I got up there I was a little panicked. I was woozy and in a cold sweat. I bought my goods,* ate the breakfast and took off for home, walking slowly and steadily, hoping not to pass out.

On the way home I made friends with Victor, a neighbor two streets down who was walking his 1.5 month old puppy named Pulgar. Pulgar's momma was a chihuahua, so this puppy, in addition to being too young to be out and about, was about 6 inches long. Victor was more comfortable speaking to me in Spanish than English. I just wanted to be home in bed.

The roommate is also sick, but his seems to be more of a cold. Mine is something different entirely. I mean, it fakes at being a cold--I'm coughing occasionally. But the extreme fatigue and dizziness make me wonder about the flu. No fever, but plenty of hot/cold flashes.

Another neighbor came by and dumped a ton of pills into a baggie to get roomie and I on the mend. They're some kind of vitamin/herb concoction, and you take, no shitting you, three enormous horse pills twice a day for three days. Quack Quack!



*one pack Tropical Emergen-C, tomato soup in tetrabrick, a roll, a can of Mango Fandango sparkling juice, and a hodgepodge of salad bar items I thought looked like they might be healthy. $9.33

Overworked....(underpaid goes with the territory)

I wish I just didn't CARE about my job sometimes.

I'm on the edge these last couple of weeks. My schedule at work is really busy with normal responsibilities (October is apparently the crazy month for this position), and to top that off, I keep finding out about one-off activities (grant planning, fund raising events, receptions, day and night-long retreats, and homework for all of the above) that I'm required to do. It's hard to prioritize, since the regular work is what my performance review will be based on, but the other things are at the direct request of my boss, or else are really only things I have the particular expertise to do. I'm juggling all these things, and I'm sick. I feel like I can't skip out of anything even though I'm sick, because they're all. so. important. THE LIFE AND HEALTH OF THE ORGANIZATION AND MY CAREER DEPEND ON THESE THINGS!

Pardon me while I keel over, mmmkay? I've been on the verge of tears all day long.

I forget these things

Ya know, occasionally I get a comment on this blog from someone I don't expect to. And then I'm kind of embarrassed if I've been ranting. I always assume the people who bother to read this blog know me well enough to understand that I'm actually a happy, sane individual with the same hardships and worries as others. But looking at yesterday? I must come across as totally cuckoo sometimes. Maybe I should cut out the venting.

Hm. Food for thought.

Wallowing so much I'm making myself laugh!

How is it that I'm both bored AND stressed out? Naw, don't bother answering.

:::shuffles back to bed:::

WAIT!

I just remembered there's a fucking FREEZE warning tonight. I took as many tomatoes off the vine as I think will actually ripen inside. The others will just have to fucking DIE.

Freeze Warning from 4:00 a.m., Oct 30 until 9:00 a.m., Oct 30

Damnit. I just remembered that I have some plants outside that need to come in.

I'm annoyed that when I type this computer is now so slow that there's about a 10-15 character lag. Pain in the ass for typos.

I don't even like the damn plants that are outside, so maybe I'll leave them out there to DIE MOTHERFUCKERS! KILL ALL THE PLANTS!

And WTF? none of the fall plants I have will even have reached any level of harvest. Oh. Except the radishes. The carrots are mere sproutlings that will be dead tomorrow because I don't give a shit. . I suppose the drought and high temperatures retarded first their germination and then their growth.

Grrrrrrrrr. Hot chocolate and a roommate who is increasingly charming (1st: cleaned the kitchen. 2nd: "Wow, I moved into the right place" when I feed him) doesn't even help all that much.

My bed is piled high with (clean) laundry. Tomorrow a.m. I'll be putting it away, provided I get up on time.

This entry deserves bad clip art.

Head falls forward onto the desk with a THUMP.

I guess I've been extremely lucky, but I've not had a cold knock me on my ass like this in at least a couple of years. I woke up yesterday morning at 8:30. I'd had ~8-9 hours of sleep. I went back to bed at 9 and slept until 11:30. Then at 1 p.m. I went to sleep again, until 5. Then I crashed out at about 9 p.m. last night and slept until 6 a.m. today. Ouch.

I'm feeling really, really ranty today. Part of it is because I'm sick.

I'm annoyed, though, too. Lemme try to tell you about it without incriminating/identifying any other people involved.

Saturday evening I walked out of a party after being reminded that DRAMA is something I avoid.

Background: I was looking forward to having a good time, having perfected my Lucy Van Pelt costume. But then I lost my keys. And getting to this party was a comedy of errors: First I got stuck on the grocery store line where people were writing checks and having to call the freaking manager every two seconds (twice on one order! And there were no other lanes open! 20 minutes to buy a bag of ice!) Then I got behind people going 20 mph in a 45, caught every single light, and was unable to stop sweating from the tizzy I had when I lost my keys. I arrived late, disheveled, frustrated and stressed. I was mad at myself, and also feeling like crap physically.

Here's the really bad part, the part I've not confessed to y'all. Some of you know this a little, and others have no idea. But for the last, oh, month or so, maybe longer, I've been slipping up on the "I don't smoke" part of my identity. Oops. No wait--that's not enough emphasis.

OOPS!!!!!!!!!!!

Better.

It began with alcohol, as these sorts of things often do, and I wasn't too terribly worried. But then it began to get worse. A couple of personal disappointments, and I'd bum a cig from the neighbor. A couple of beers out and I'd bum from a stranger. At one point I bought a pack, smoked a couple and gave it away. Then I bought two packs--BOGO. I smoked a couple, and figured I'd give the pack to the neighbor. But I didn't. Not immediately.

Do you see where this is going? Well this weekend I was bound and determined to make sure that I didn't continue let myself slip into a pattern that I really, really didn't want. So I said to myself that no matter what, I was not going to smoke Saturday night.

And then in that long line at the grocery store, after losing my keys and having to put up with asinine grocery staff, I bought a pack. And smoked a couple on the way to the party.

So add extremely disappointed in myself to the list of things I was feeling when I arrived.

I sat away from other people for a minute, hoping that I could just brush the pissyness off. I saw a friend, probably the only one there that I feel really close to, and called the friend over. The friend was getting their partner a beer but said they'd stop back in just a second. The friend returned, and a few seconds later the partner showed up. I explained a little bit about why I was frazzled, and then the partner looked at me and said:

"You realize you're a smoker again, don't you Stew? You might as well just admit it."

I was flabbergasted. That is the LAST thing I needed to hear--extremely hurtful. I just stared.

"I mean, you'd rather I straight up tell you the truth than lie to you, right?"

I just stared again. Then I walked into the other room. I sat there, seething. What the FUCK? Why did this person decide that was an appropriate thing to say? Did they think it would somehow be HELPFUL to kick me in the stomach? Within a few moments, the person came to find me.

"I'm sorry Stew, I didn't know that was a sore point." (Um....yes you did--I've known you for how many years?)

Drama Person tried to back out but none of the explanations were flying with me. It boiled down to Drama Person being hateful because of someone else not meeting Drama person's needs.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with similar issues. I've decided to avoid Drama Person as best I can.

Should be fun

From an email I just got from the DJ...

Greetings boils and ghouls,

Tune in to WXDU tonight (10/28) to be terrorized by the most
frightfully good mix of 50s and 60s monster rock this side of
Transylvania! Put on your costume and pot up your radio dial to hear
blood curdling songs about mummies, vampires, Hindus on Hondas and
more! Its gonna be a graveyard smash!

N. Carolinians: listen locally at 88.7 FM. Out of staters: freak out
over the internet at wxdu.org!

Who's Got the Cuckoo?
8:30-9:30 PM
WXDU 88.7 FM
Durham, NC
wxdu.org

Spookily,

*********

I'm sick. Pounding head, stuffy nose, alternately cold and hot (but no measurable fever), plugged ears, sore throat, achy...wanting nothing but to sleep. I put off a trip to Greensboro to meet Joyce and Laurie, which, BOO, because it's high time we met, dangnabit.

I'm supposed to make a yellow birthday cake with whipped cream icing for a coworker who avoids all cake except that kind. I just called my boss at home, though, and begged out. Whew. Saved by the bell.

G'night.

Costumes

This weekend is one of parties. I've been quite social on weekends these days, and last night I just couldn't make it out to a pumpkin-carving party I was supposed to go to. I'm getting a cold, so I was all tickly-throated, sniffy, stuffy, hot-eyed and rather on the miserable side. Nix on the trip to Carrboro just to cut pumpkin guts out.

And besides, I have another pumpkin-carving party to go to this afternoon. And then a Halloween party tonight.

I hit the farmer's market this a.m. and picked up some smoked* farmer's cheese from the Creamery, and some ground beef. I hadn't been to the market in ages (fell off the wagon after One Local Summer), so it was kind of creepy to see how sparse the offerings had become.

I was with New Roommate, and he talked me into going to the fairgrounds for some hot flea market action. But there wasn't a flea market going on so we went to my fave thrift store instead.

SCORE!
One men's XL Patagonia cashmere sweater (all the better to shrink you with, my dear!)
One pair of black, high-heeled Mary Janes.
One large, plush football.

On the way back we stopped by El Rey de la Comida for some staples (beer, milk, bar soap) and some treats (sugar cereal, IBC rootbeer--diet). I started to get light headed, as I hadn't eaten anything yet. It was almost 1 p.m.

Today it feels like I'm telling my story to convince myself that I do exist.

New Roommate prepared some chicken sausages to share while I stuffed my gourd with fritos and salsa.

I made a pasta salad based on one my mom used to make all the time. Rotini, olive oil, black olives, tomatoes, tuna, and then capers and caper juice. As a finishing touch, I chunked up that 1/2 lb of smoked farmer's cheese and tossed that in once the pasta cooled. It's really tasty. Full of umami goodness. Maybe it's the still-from-my-garden tomato chunks?

Speaking of my tomatoes, this recent 4 inches of rain (still not enough) has really messed with their poor little hides. Any tomato that was in the process of ripening is now bursting with large, fresh cracks from too much too quickly.

My bathroom ceiling leaked last night. I was afraid it was going to fall in. It didn't.

Wow this is a boring entry.

So what do you think I'm going to be for Halloween? There's at least one hint in this entry.

Off to shower and then clip my toenails.

*They get it smoked at the BBQ Joint.