Two Flus in the Cuckoo's Nest

A Month of Silence would be a good name for a Lifetime movie-of-the-week, wouldn't it? I imagine it would star Kellie Martin, and be about a whistle-blower trying to testify against some evil corporation, but must first escape a hitman that turns out to be her abusive ex-husband. Or it could just be the state of this blog, which has lain dormant for a while. Would you like a good excuse? OK. During our Christmas vacation trip, LabRat's family gave him the gift of the worst flu he's ever had, which he then passed along to me. We spent the better part of January sunk in lethargic misery. We didn't go out. We didn't work on the apartment. I didn't blog. Three weeks passed in which the only things I could barely dredge up the energy for were going to work, watching TV, and blowing my nose.

Aside from that, the new year has brought a lot of what I call death-by-paper-cuts. Little niggling problems are fine when they can be handled and put behind you, but when a hundred little niggling problems all fall on your head at the same time, life can be a real chore. So during my flu, I also got to contend with all of the following:

-Two debilitating computer viruses in two months. Fortunately, Chris was able to swiffer away the problems, but each one took hours of diagnostic work and fixes. I'd be a mess at trying to deal with that while healthy.

-I was never hungry, and I never felt like cooking, so all I ate during my sickness was junk and bland crap, counter-balanced by as much fruit as I could stomach, hoping it would chase the sickness away.

-Clothing literally falling apart as I wear it. Nothing quite makes your day like the sole of your shoe falling off on the day you walked to work in four inches of snow. Oh, and it was the same day I was wearing the jeans that have the zipper that won't stay up for more than three minutes without making its way back down again. I sure looked classy.

-Thinking I'd scored a deal on free dining room furniture. My mom has been storing my grandmother's old set in her garage, and offered it to me. I was thrilled, thinking I could put together one of the rooms in the new apartment at low cost. We rented a cargo van, hauled it over to the new place, and wrestled it all the way up the stairs. Thing is, storing furniture in a garage for years takes its toll. All the joints are coming apart. Everything is unusable. It was a generous offer, but instead of getting our dining room ready for low cost, I now have a dining room crammed with worthless stuff that must be wrestled down the stairs before anything suitable can be wrestled back up. Then I have to figure out how much I have to spend on new furniture. I'm guessing it won't be free.

-Just as I was getting over my flu, and was looking forward to going out and doing something, I went to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning. After a stern lecture about flossing, the hygienist attacked my mouth with the metal pick. Now, I was expecting my gums to bleed. What I wasn't expecting was my gums to bleed for three days. And not a gentle pool of blood, either. It was an almost constant eruption that I could only staunch by not spitting it out and letting it crust over into a huge gob of blood-snot. It was as attractive as it sounds, not the mention the added bonus of tasting blood for 72 hours straight.

-My iPod is acting up. If I can't pass the time at work with podcasts, I'm going to go batshit.

-It's tax season. Nuff said.

-Not getting to vent about all this stuff, because they're all such minor problems. I sound like such a jackass when I whine about dining room furniture when people in Haiti are trying to claw their way out of their demolished houses.

As I said before, none of these things would really get me down if they'd happened on their own. But when they all happened, and I was too sick for anything good to happen to counteract them, I got pretty depressed.

Here I am, though, so that must mean some good news, right? Right. The flu is gone. The blood geysers are gone. Going to work healthy is an unexpected pleasure, compared to going to work sick and miserable. The iPod's getting looked at tomorrow. The Craigslist ad for someone to come and take the old dining room set is being written and posted tonight. LabRat and I have been able to resume a social life. I'm back in the kitchen, excited to try new recipes and concoctions. If I'm not completely back to my normal, optimistic self, I'm at least at lot closer. I will never look back at January '10 with fondness, but it's behind us now. Let's hope this happier outlook with assist me into cajoling someone into taking that damned furniture.