Tuesday,
December 18, 2001

Why should any of this surprise me at all?

Once again, I am feeling like I'm lying across the threshold of death's door, and we still don't have medical cards. Whee.

At least I now know it has nothing to do with the plumbing, and I do know that one of my officemates had something lung-based that was absolutely dreadful and it seems to be making the rounds (the Man from McKinney is currently on Biaxin and trying not to let it graduate to bronchitis). Me, I'm trying to stave it off with Sudafed and lots of sleep (please, Lord, I have to fly to Chicago on Saturday -- I CAN'T get sick now), but I have doubts about their efficaciousness (I do know I had some extremely vivid, extremely draining dreams all last night -- I felt like someone had hoovered out my subconscious and flung the contents across my mind).

Of course, the MfM also says that this sounds a hell of a lot like stress, which is probably part of it, too. I really don't know how to deal with stress very well -- I re-read some of my entries here or re-read my old hardcopy journals, and it seems like at least 30% of the entries have to do with me bitching about how something is just twanging my stress levels like there's no tomorrow. What's hanging over my head now? Well, I had to make sure two bills were paid so that there wasn't an embarrassing loss of certain utilities, go get the rental automatic so that Lyndon can practice in it before going in for the test on Thursday, go home and collapse for the rest of the afternoon (blowing off FutureClassics, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, but I just couldn't do it, gang), get up when he came home for more parallel parking practice and driving in the neighborhood where the tester will take him (he's never driven at night before -- that was a special experience, let me tell you). And I still have to stop in at my doc and beg a refill on my thyroid meds, finish and mail out our extremely late Christmas cards, finish my Christmas shopping (including mailing out my dad's), leave on Saturday for Chicago and a fun-filled holiday week, pull together two user guides before January 2, and generally keep the world rotating single-handed.

Oh, and apparently my blood pressure has gone up about ten points in the last month. Make of that what you will.