Feeling much better today. Not that that would be difficult.
Further evidence that my job serves the fringe element of society: I may have mentioned my 4-year-old client NC before. He's a very active, high maintenance kiddo with mild speech and language issues; he's also quite sweet and has a rather touching 4-year-old crush on me. His mom attends every therapy session with him. Every session. I kid you not; this kid would not miss therapy unless he was bleeding out his eyes. It's weird--you'd think that that kind of dedication would come from a parent who was rigid or highly concerned about their child's progress or overly focused on the western medical model, like if they rack up enough attendance points I'll fix their kid for them or something, but NC's mom really doesn't strike me that way at all. I mean, she's real good with the follow through and actually made up her own home program for NC, but she seems pretty laid back. Her attitude is more like, "Mondays and Wednesdays we have speech, so that's just what we do..." Other things don't seem get in the way of following the routine for her. Case in point: this morning, NC's 8:15 speech session was attended by NC, mom, dad, and five day old brother KC. KC was born last Wednesday. They went to the hospital directly after speech that day, and one epidural and three big pushes later she popped him out. Dad had to drive them in this morning, because mom's still on the Vicodan and can't drive, but it was Monday so they were there for therapy. What do you say to that kind of dedication? I sort of laughed weakly and got on with the session.
I had kind of pictured NC as being the kid who'd freak out over having mom's attention divided between him and the new baby, but he was actually really sweet. He and I were working at the table, and occasionally KC would make a little peep in his sleep, and NC would stop and go over to check: "What my baby doing, mama?"
I think about my speech kids sometimes and my heart just aches, I love them so much. I feel like I'm being poured out, and it's a blessing but it's scary too.
A warning up front: I strongly suspect this entry will be full of self-indulgent whining. Uh, I mean more self-indulgent whining.
I am so very tired. For various reasons I have not had a full night's sleep in over a week, meaning I am shaky and strung out and cranky as hell. I drank one of those Code Red Mountain Dews during the repeat of Smallville this afternoon (brilliant idea, that. Wired and wiped out is such the way to go), and ended up bawling throughout most of the teaser. God only knows why; there wasn't anything particularly sad about the cartoon violence of the meteor shower. The pilot episode was cute, but it didn't strike me as quite as slashy as people seem to be suggesting. I dig the show, though. Yeah, it's cheesy and the dialogue is embarassing in patches (and was I the only one who had a moment of abject fear that the writers were going to go for a bad "facts of life" joke during that exchange between Clark and his dad? "This morning when I woke up...I was kind of floating." "Well, son, there comes a time in every young man's life when his body starts to change...") and Lana's character is really bland, even if she's sweet, but I still like the show. There's a feeling of security in cheesy television--I already know they're going to undershoot my expectations, so I don't have to wait for the blow. More importantly, if the show's bad I can watch without obsessing over it.
The Hubster's in the bathroom removing a splinter from his palm. With a pocketknife. I suggested the knife, because it's easier than using tweezers, but still. Shudder.
Okay, he got it.
At some other point I will talk about the party last night, which was kind of disappointing. Our costumes looked fabulous, though.
Oh. The 8.5 miles went quite well. I got through the whole run, which included a bunch of hills, without significant trouble, and then came home and sat in a bathtub full of cold water for ten minutes, which sucked. But our coach strongly suggested that method for reducing soreness, and in fact the only muscles that are sore today are my hip flexors. I'll have to figure out some way to strengthen them, because I have it on good authority that your hip flexors are what you finish the marathon on after your quads give out around mile 22.
Okay, going to bed. LH, if you're reading this, I went to bed very shortly after posting last time, so I got your email the next day. Sorry!
I'm having a total back-to-middle-school experience right this minute. I'm all squealy and squirmy-happy because I just realized somebody else--namely, xen--linked to my blog, and it's like Ben Brockhouse smiled at me in homeroom or something. I am such a geekazoid.
Halloween party tomorrow night at C and S's house. I supppose I'm looking forward to it. I'm in that anticipation/dread stage where I know it's going to be fun, but I also know I'm going to hate the hour and a half or so that the Hubster and I sit around in our costumes and make half-hearted small talk with the four other people who get there at the start time listed on the invitation. I'm also torn with regards to our costumes--I can't wait to wear mine, yet I don't think they're going to be particularly successful with just the two of us. We're going as boyband members, but since it's only the Hubster and me we don't make much of a visual impression. I'm just dying to get dressed up, though. With luck, I can use this opportunity to work through some of my love/hate issues surrounding the boyband phenomenon, as well as indulge my apparent kink for genderbending.
I feel this entry about to veer off into faux intellectualism regarding sexuality, gender identity, and the impressionability of youth, and I will divert it now. I do not want to get into the lack of strong female role models in my childhood and my persistent identification with badass anti-authority figures such as Darth Maul, because I am essentially a harmless weiner geek. I just wish I was Darth Maul, so I could totally make people lick my boots.
No veering. I said we weren't going to veer.
Anyway, the Smallville pilot's getting replayed here on Sunday. I plan to lie on the couch in a daze and let Lex's sexy bald head work magic on my endocrine system.
Feeling much better today. My congestion has greatly decreased, so I can blow my nose without the sound of huge gears grinding. Also, the resulting colors are considerably less...flamboyant, shall we say. It's cool to feel human.
Some things I did this weekend, aside from recover: shop at thrift stores for Halloween costume items. Purchase a shirt with a spectacularly conflicted design concept, namely, a brown and gold snakeskin pattern in faux velvet. Yes, the shirt is part of my costume...Also bought some hideous mustard colored men's Levi's to go with the shirt, and trashy fake-punk accessories. Had people over for dinner. Watched Election, which I enjoyed rather less than I'd hoped. Objectively, the movie was well written, but subjectively...bleh. Didn't like it. A big part of my reaction is explained fairly simply: I greatly dislike adultery plotlines. I find them morally offensive in a manner that I cannot joke about, and plus I'm a newlywed. Give me a fucking break. Also watched The Craft, which I liked more. I have this weird affection for Robin Tunney, yet I can't figure out what generates it. I don't think she's a particularly good actress, nor do I find her attractive. I think it's just the result of having seen a lot of movies she's been in, although damned if I can remember any of them aside from Vertical Limit.
Things I did not do this weekend: Finish my re-evaluation report on AV, which really ought to have been done last week. Watch due South tapes. Reply to email from my local buddy LG. This last one is something I'll probably have more to say about at a later date, because I'm kind of in an awkward situation with her. We've reached a stage in the friendship where I'm starting to...lack interest, and I don't really know what to do about it.
I'd explore that subject more fully, but what do you know? It's 10:17pm. Time for bed.
So that cold I was bitching about earlier? You know, back on Saturday? It's still around.
Yeah. I can't believe it either.
It was a generic cold (although bad, bad, bad) through the weekend. Monday and Tuesday had a slight lessening of symptoms, enough to make me think I was flirting with recovery. Hah. I should have been on alert after Tuesday night. I woke up about 2am with the right side of my nose completely blocked. Nothing I did would relieve the congestion enough for me to breathe through that side. I felt like a stroke patient, except instead of hemispheric neglect, my body had right sinus neglect. "Sinus? What sinus? That's not my sinus. I don't know how it got there..."
Wednesday...ugh. Sinus congestion, the likes of which I cannot recall. I was at work, of course. It was awful. My nose was totally blocked, crap was running down my throat, I was hacking and coughing, and I had no nasal consonants whatsoever. Thankfully, it wasn't my day to see TK, with whom I'm working on nasal sounds (/m/, /n/, and "ng"), because I would have been no good to him at all. I made it through the day, but it was a close call.
Thursday I went in for about an hour and a half, and then called it quits. The congestion was still there, and my face had started to ache along my right cheekbone, stretching back toward my ear. Enough people told me (politely) that I looked like shit, and I was becoming concerned that I had a sinus infection, though I'd never had one before. I ended up going home and calling my doctor to see if it was worth coming in; I'd talked to the doctor who comes to our Thursday morning meetings and she'd said that what I had was going around. The nurse I got on the phone was noncommital until I mentioned the color of the crap coming out of my nose, and then she was like, "Hmm, well, you might want to be safe and get that checked out." So I went in and spent about four minutes with the doctor while he wrote me some prescriptions on the chance that I did in fact have a sinus infection. Got them filled, and then spent the rest of the day sleeping and lying around. I still wasn't sure that I was actually infected, so I had some pangs of conscience about possibly contributing to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but I was running a fever last night, so I'm pretty sure I've got more than just a nasty cold.
Thought about going in to work again today, but as I was eating breakfast this morning I noticed that my damn teeth ached when I chewed, so I just said fuck it. I'm glad I'm not there, because every time I start thinking I feel fine and I should get up, I'll do something outrageous like lean over and my face will start throbbing again. Plus I got winded walking to the mailbox, so I'm feeling extra pathetic.
What most pisses me off about this illness, aside from the fact that I'm not getting paid for two days this week, is that I've been almost totally unable to run for two weeks, so there's no way I'm going to attempt the 8 miles we're supposed to do tomorrow. Bleh. I was looking forward to that. My plan, with luck, is to recover enough to do the 8.5 next weekend.
In other news, I'm a little pissed that I missed the Smallville premiere. I hadn't planned to watch it, but I've heard a bunch of people talking about how cool the premiere was, and I'm a bit jealous. I looked to see if my local WB station was rerunning it this weekend, but it appears not. There's a small chance C and S taped it, but I'm not sure if the WB is really their speed, so probably not. But dude, even the mightybigtv guy said it was slashy.
Also, I am not watching Buffy. This is a calculated move on my part, and one that I sometimes regret, but...I just can't. I know it's a good solid show for the most part. I know it's got a blend of horror and camp that I'd probably love. I know that Joss Whedon's good with bringing a plot arc to completion within our natural lifetimes, a trait that I value tremendously. But I can't watch Buffy, and the reasons are mostly because it is all of those things. I am just not willing to expend the kind of emotional energy I know Buffy would engender in me on another damn tv show. Been there, done that, and it was called The X-Files. I wove almost four years of my life around that show, and when I think about its current state my chest aches. It sounds melodramatic, and it is melodramatic, but you have to remember that when season four started I was in my second year of college. Things were in a fairly constant state of suckage, and XF in many ways kept my head above water. I made some truly excellent friends through the show. I lost one of those somewhere in late season five, and my life is much the better for the loss, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt like hell at the time. The Scully cancer arc made some of that bearable. When I moved to Texas for grad school, somewhere in those endless months between the movie (the beloved movie! Ask me how many times I saw it in the theater, and what it meant to me) and the start of season six, XF was one of the few ties I had to hang on to. When my interest started to fade, somewhere mid-season six...it was scary. Mulder and Scully and Krycek (mmm, Krycek) had been present in my mind for so long, I didn't quite know how to let go of them. Last season was painful. Krycek's death made me want to break things. I watched the episode on tape shortly after returning from my honeymoon, and I was completely unspoiled and unprepared. The poor Hubster--he came down from upstairs to find me bawling on the couch, and didn't know whether to take it seriously or not. I cried so hard for Krycek, but also for the time and energy and emotion that I had put into a show that didn't work anymore. I'm not going to watch this season. When I get maudlin, it feels like I'm betraying the characters.
So I'm not going to watch Buffy. I mean, for one thing it's the sixth season and I'd never really catch up. For another, I'm not ready to give up the intensity of the love I have for due South yet, and I know that would happen to some degree. But mostly it's because of The X-Files, and what that show used to be to me.
Man. I better go take some meds before I get even more nostalgic.
The Hubster thinks calling me Snotty McPhlegmster is freaking hysterical. If I had energy for anything more taxing than lying in my desk chair and coughing weakly, I'd remind him that people who spent the entire day in detox after drinking way too much at a non-heavy drinking oriented party last night would do well to exercise a little tact.
This place was the Duplex O' Misery today, I tell you.
I'm sick. It's distressing, because this is the third or fourth time in about five months that I've been physically ill, when in the past I've typically been pretty healthy. Physically healthy. Let me continue to stress that "physically" part. But man, these past couple of months...they've been hell on my system. There was the awful, terrible cold I got on the tail end of my honeymoon in May, where I went through mountains of kleenex trying to keep a handle on the sneezing. That was bad--I'd never before found sneezing to be much of a hassle; in fact, if you sneeze rarely enough, it can actually be kind of fun when it does happen. (Fun like you say "heh" and then you get over it, mind you; not fun like you leap up and down while shrieking joyously). But that cold--man. I spent the two and a half days we were in Seattle with my nose tingling and itching and my eyes running and having to stop dead in my tracks and spazz out on a sneeze every ten feet or so. It was a new and different cold experience in many unpleasant ways.
Then there was the laryngitis in late May, when I lost my voice for two days. Which was highly unfortunate, because let me just remind you that I'm a speech therapist. The irony in my life was a bit thick during that period, I tell you what. Then I got sort of nauseous and weird and had to go home one other afternoon, although I think that may have been fatigue more than anything. Then there have been the mood swings, and the "drinking an entire bottle of wine on a school night" incident of last month, and now this cold and sore throat, which I am afraid will devolve into more laryngitis, as my voice has deepened dramatically. It sucks.
To be honest, I don't really feel all that bad, aside from the stuffy nose and raw throat. No headache or fever or anything, and I actually ran with my group this morning with no particular discomfort. Of course, the cold hadn't kicked in yet, but I was still well enough to get through drills and 4.5 miles without spontaneous combustion. I was a bit disappointed with the run, though, because last week's 6 miles felt so much better than this week's shorter distance. I was sick, yes, and I had skipped several of the weekly training runs because I was trying to stave off my illness, yes, but today was still kind of a crappy run.
Okay, this is turning into a big long entry of me whining. Let's switch course.
Fun stuff that's happened recently:
* I went to a cool conference in Dallas last weekend. It was on Sensory Integration techniques for SLPs (speech-language pathologists), and I feel simultaneously like I learned a ton and nothing at all. But I've tried out some of the ideas on my kids, and I've gotten some results that seem to be positively voodoo, that's how dramatic they are. Pretty exciting.
* While in Dallas I stayed with supervisor JD's parents, who were extremely sweet, and hung out with her and her friends on Friday night during their pre-O.U. weekend party. Of course, the Longhorns went on to lose to O.U. the next day, but I still got to sit in a loud, smoky bar with JD and drink too much beer.
* Some guy on a bicycle whistled at me when I was running last week. How long has it been since that happened? It was nice to have my internal image of myself as blazingly hot mama validated by someone other than the Hubster.
* To my surprise and pleasure, I've found that I like Enterprise. Other than a brief stint with Voyager fandom, I've never been much into Star Trek, but I'm kind of digging the new show. And I can't believe I'm about to say this, but T'Pol and that guy Tripp? I could probably get behind them as a het pairing. They have some actual chemistry.
Think I will go take some more cold medicine. Later.
There are several things I am wishing for at this moment:
1. I wish that I had never discovered that I really, really need a full eight hours of sleep every night, because I hate going to bed at ten-fucking-thirty six days a week. Especially right now, when it's 10:20.
2. I wish we weren't bombing Afghanistan.
3. I wish that either a). it didn't feel like such an enormous effort to keep myself informed about current events, or b). I wouldn't feel guilty about ignoring them.
4. I wish the Hubster and I didn't generate so damn much laundry.
5. I wish my late day at work didn't coincide with my long midweek running day.
6. I wish I had enough energy to pack a lunch that I might conceivably want to eat tomorrow.
7. I wish entering receipts into Quicken was jolly good fun.
8. I desperately wish my moods would stabilize. I do not understand how I can be simultaneously hugely excited about getting back to work so I can try out some of the new ideas I learned at my conference this weekend, and so not ready to go back that I spend the evening cleaning and crying, cleaning and crying.
9. I wish I had the energy to write email.
10. I wish it was not 10:32, and therefore past my bedtime.
