Occasional Notes

I have acquired a particularly virulent strain of the plague which had me curled up under the covers in jeans, thick socks, a long-sleeved top, and a sweatshirt earlier. Every time I got up, I started shaking with cold, so I spent most of the afternoon there. My mother called from Canada and told me to take something to lower the fever, which has helped, but I still feel disgusting. BF is looking after me and making me bland food and bringing me glasses of water, which is helping.

And at the end of a gorgeous weekend, in which BF, myself, and some friends headed up to the British Motorcycle Federation's annual massive event. There were motorbikes and people racing mopeds in stupid outfits and a Wall of Death and bands and barbeques and all sorts.

Tucking back up into bed now. I do not intend to come out until tomorrow afternoon. I have already emailed my cover work in to school. So there.

I think the milk on the big bowl of cereal I just ate was going off.

Which I didn't figure out until I'd finished eating the bowl of cereal and realised that the consistancy of the milk left at the bottom didn't look quite right.

Oh, lord, please don't let me get food poisoning. Don't have time, can't cope, don't want to.


o.O

Well, I have done something stupid to my back and it is quite sore again. I haven't been this bad in ages, which is distressing as one week, three hours, and forty-four minutes from now, I am going to be setting off for Boston.

Not that I am counting.

There is a lot of sitting between here and Boston. Must sort that out.

In other news, am enjoying an evening of lazlet, wildrocket, The Goth Detective Team, and the Pissy Doctor Boyfriends Show. Also internets. And pizza and wine! All very good.

Just the thing after a day where one of my kids tried to stab another kid in the head with a pencil first period, a kid shouted something vaguely racist across the room second period, and every subsequent period just involved me winding children up until they reached the breaking point. I became a teacher because it's the only profession I could find where I could torture children without getting into trouble. What other job could I have where I would be allowed to systematically steal the shoes of small children, I ask you?

My favourite part of the day was where I covered an English class composed half of kids I teach for History and half of kids that didn't know me. I proceeded to be as crazy as I usually am and demanded shoes in trade for lending pens, made fun of the children who argued with me, and taught everyone that the word "geek" means "eats live animals." The half of the class that knows me proceeded to assure the half that didn't that, no, she really is serious, you have to give her your shoe, and despite the fact that she seems insane, she doesn't actually bite. At least, she hasn't yet. Much.

Fun, I tell you.

My nasty, filthy children have given me the bubonic plague. I was thoroughly immune to the Canadian bubonic plague by the end of my practice teaching last year, but this is the British bubonic plague, against which I have no defences. Of course, I do not feel as though I can call in sick. I, after all, am the person who is in charge of covering for teachers who feel the way that I do currently but stay home instead of dragging themselves out of bed and into work.

I changed my mind. I don't want to be a teacher anymore. I would prefer to have the kind of job where I can call in sick.

The other Canadian teacher that was hired at the same time I was also has this horrible disease. She is, as near as I can tell, about two days ahead on it. I have much to look forward to. All I can say is that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

:P

I would like to hereby quit my ovaries. And my lower back. And my shoulders and my right hip and my left knee.

My body is in revolt and I will not stand for it.

Clearly, the only solution for times like these is to take my coffee and go back to bed.

This morning, I got up, got ready, packed up my favourite toys, and let my mother drive me to the babysitter's before she headed off for Sudbury.

Well, not really, but it rather feels like it.

We discovered that we have acquired a colony of carpenter ants in our house and so we got an exterminator in to get rid of them. He is currently spraying poison into our baseboards and doing other, exterminator-y things with toxic substances. We tossed the cats outside for the day and mom is taking the dogs in to the kenel for the day, but that left the problem of what to do with me. Under normal circumstances, I could be relied upon to entertain myself until it's safe to go back to the house this afternoon, but given the can't-sit-can't-drive-can't-overexert limitations I am currently opperating under, it got a bit more complicated than that.

A brief tangent: the night my back siezed and I went in to the hospital, my mother and sister and I were all semi-frantic about what to do. We fretted about each other until we were going in circles with it -- my mother was worried about my back and about keeping my sister out late when she had an exam first thing the next morning. I worried about my mother's knee and about my sister being out late when she had an exam first thing the next morning. My sister worried about my mom's knee, my back, and the emotional strain of it all on both of us.

In all of this, did we think to call anyone for help?

No, we did not.

And, trust me, we heard about it. One of my friends from school gave me hell for not calling her up. She came to see me in the hospital and informed me quite indignantly that she would have been more than happy to come out and pick my mother up so that my sister could have stayed home and done school work and gotten to bed in time. My mother also got an earful from her two closest friends in town on the same topic. Both of them lectured her at great length on her blind self-sufficiency and pointed out that they would have been more than happy to come out at any late hour of the night to take my sister home and then come back to sit with my mother in the hospital to wait for news.

We were both quite cowed and apologised profusely to our respective friends.

Back to today: My mother called up one of the two chastisers and, to make amends, asked if I could come and recline at her house for the day. I am currently installed on her couch, with the remotes for the digital cable close at hand and free access to her wireless internet.

(and, if I may say, this is WAY better than the babysitters I had when I was younger! digital cable! wireless internet!)

I will be fed lunch and a snack in the afternoon, and then I will be driven home and dropped off at a time that will not leave me at my own devices for too long before my father and sister, who have been out of town, arrive back home later this evening.

Hi. I am the sevenest. I think I may be having a second childhood.

I am preparing to leave the house under my own power (being carried out does not count) in over a week. I am starting physiotherapy up at the hospital and my first appointment is this afternoon. I am slightly frightened of the outside world omg looking forward to it.

In other news, for no apparent reason, I have been overdosing on science websites of late. I have learned many interesting things. For example, the Big Bang? Probably made a sound that was more like a deep hum. There's an audio file. Other sounds of space may be heard here.

Oh so cool.

Also this morning, I made a cake. I am concerned that the icing is too sweet, though. The cake itself turned out great. Go me.

Threw out my back to a degree that two Robaxacet have barely made a dint. Trapped flat on back on floor with my legs sticking under my bed. Mother coming to save me (read: hoist me into bed and leave me there until morning).

Damn it, where did the sunshine and puppies go?

Oh, wait, there's a puppy, trying to lick my face and step on my belly.

Ow, ow, ow.

I've been lying in bed all day (with the two hour exception of getting up at 6:30 this morning to pick my sister up from an all-night movie thing at the local theatre and drive her to her driver's ed classes), unable to convince myself to get up and get going even by thinking about the excessively long list of things that are due by Monday or by thinking about the fact that tomorrow is Mother's Day and I have done nothing to get ready for the auspicious occasion.

It occurs to me that I am sick.

This conclusion is further supported by the headache and serious case of the blahs that have been my consistent bedmates today.

So. The thing I bought at Starbucks yesterday afternoon was not so much the decaf they promised me (and, again, upon double checking, as I know what caffiene does to me so late in the day) it was.

And there was a point, somewhere around 2:00am, where I seriously contemplated taking up the occult just in order to get the phone number of the Starbucks employee who told me such filthy lies. I would have called them up and, in a very calm voice, explained to them that I have twenty-five eleven year olds waiting for me in a room today and I have to teach them poetry and gym and fractions and things and I needed my sleep, which was not so much something I got.

I am also very sick.

I would prefer death, but it looks like I will be going to work instead.