Then, Wednesday night, Mo got up at 2:30 in the morning, and I couldn't get her back to sleep. I didn't drug her at 2:30 because I thought I'd gotten her back down. But at 3:30 when I got up again, and saw evidence that she'd been up for most of the past hour, I realized she'd only fooled me long enough to get me to go back to sleep.
At this point, I feared that Benadryl would backfire with her being impossible to wake in time for school Thursday. So I rode the storm out. I'd make her come to my bed hoping a snuggle would make sleep come, and she'd play with the air coming from my CPAP, and pull on my ear lobes and put my hand in her armpit and say 'Tickle,' and then she'd flop around and hop, leave the room.
It was a long night.
So when I was drag-ass on Thursday, I figured it was just fatigue. I was planning to go to Hayseed Dixie at Knuckleheads this evening, so maybe denial was also part of the equation. I can't get sick: one of my favorite acts to catch live is performing on the rare Friday I don't have the girls.
You just haven't partied until you've heard War Pigs played on banjos 'n mandolins 'n such. Not to mention the groupie factor: gotta love them Hayseed Dixie Chicks.
But anyway, Thursday night in bed I wake up with the chills. And needing to find the throne immediately. I turned on the space heater in the bathroom while I took care of the first order of business, then took some aspirin and Imodium and bundled up in a hoodie and sweats, piled on more comforters and went back to bed.
When I woke, I felt better, if not perfect. So I went to work.
And on the drive in, I got the chills again. I'm cranking the car's heater all the way in and shivering. Took some Advil once at work, and tried to hold it together. It's been slow at the office the past couple weeks, and I was pretty well caught up. There's a design project I'd really like to tackle, but it's not time critical and I really wasn't focused enough to attempt anything on that front.
So after two and a half hours, I threw it in. In fifteen months at this job, my first sick day, and not even a full day. If I'd been covered up with work, I'd have toughed it out, I'm sure. I don't have any sense that way. I'm the guy who only missed a week of work for a heart attack. When I wanted to go back to work, the VP of operations was like, 'I'm gonna need to hear from your doctor that this is okay...'
But looking for something to do is bad by itself, and working sick sucks, I couldn't conceive why I'd look for something to do while sick.
Driving home, I was sweating, the Ibuprofen apparently breaking the fever. I felt moderately better, but the thought of going home was oppressive. Laundry that's behind. Dishes that are behind. Vacuuming (and unclogging the vacuum), sweeping and mopping. The yard needs mowed.
I could have come home and sat in front of cable TV, but that seemed even more depressing than the housework, my plantar fasciitis in my left foot was inexplicably throbbing away on top of it all. I was about pain free yesterday, go figure.
So I found an escape: I went to a movie. I don't go often because it's expensive, but it turns out if you show up in the morning on a weekday, the first showing is only $4.50. And the high school dropouts staffing the joint don't mind if you bring in an outside soda.
I saw Iron Man.
I'm not a comic book guy, but I've always felt I ought to be. A lot of my friends are. And I tend to really enjoy movies adapted from comics. The Batman movies have been pretty solid if not excellent. See also Spiderman. Hulk sucked hard, but I saw a preview for an Ed Norton Hulk flick that looks promising while waiting to see Iron Man.
I knew nothing about the comic. Less than the nothing I know of Batman or Spiderman, so I can't attest to the faithfulness of the film to the original. Except that all the comic readers I know keep telling me Iron Man is really faithful to the comic.
I do know I want me one of those suits. And that Jeff Bridges continues to impress me. How The Dude from the Big Lebowsky can be an evil captain of industry...and this is the dude from Fearless!
Plus, Robert Downey Junior has a way better body than I do despite being five years my senior and having forgotten more about substance abuse than I'm likely ever to know. I don't know if he's juicing or what, but I think I'd take human growth hormone shots, with all their risks, if it meant I'd have a better body at 43 than I did at 23.
I also know I'd eat Gwyneth Paltrow's poop. But I guess I knew that back around Shakespeare In Love. And she's only like three years younger than me, so you can't even bust me for the age-inappropriate crush.
It was a fun movie. Not great, but one that was definitely better on the big screen than it could ever be on a TV at home. The theater's aggressive air conditioning helped me with the fever sweat factor. It's a long film, over two hours. As an escape, it was worth four and a half bucks.
No comments:
Post a Comment