Back to real life

One of the things I love about doing a play is that it completely lifts me out of my regular existence of largely being a hermit, spending my days alone at the computer, spending my evenings with Monkey and Otto and then vegetating on the couch in front of some truly horrible television programming. [Sidebar: So now that we all know that Storage Wars is fake you’d think we’d stop watching it. You’d think we would remove it and Storage Wars Texas from our DVR. You would not think that we would continue popping popcorn and plunking ourselves down to watch these shows every week like they were solid entertainment, but you would be wrong, because… ummmm… yeah, I got nothing. I like popcorn? Yes.]

It’s good for me to pretend to be a social person. By the time we get to show week, we’re all cruising along on adrenaline, and I gamely pop in my contact lenses and spackle my face every night and head out to spend the evening with a fabulous group of women. And I love every minute of it. I keep finding myself thinking WHY DON’T I DO THIS MORE OFTEN?

And then the show ends and I come down with some sort of Mystery Exhaustion Virus and I remember why I don’t: I’m a delicate flower.

Luckily, I’m not all that sick, this time. I think I’m about 90% Just Plain Tired and maybe 10% germy. It’s hard to know. But the show wrapped on Sunday and then yesterday Monkey and I were hanging around the house and I was trying to whip up some energy to, I don’t know, attend to the hundred things I’d let slide during the production. But at the same time I was tiiiiiiired and I was trying to get some work done and get Monkey to get some of HIS work done, and then the Bug Guy came to spray and he was trying to be friendly and said to Monkey (who was sitting at his computer), “So, pretty nice having the day off from school, huh? Get to stay home?”

Monkey looked him dead in the eye like he was quite possibly the stupidest person he’d ever encountered and said, “I’m homeschooled. I’m actually working right now.” And I had to try really, really hard not to laugh. Bug Guy gamely continued on about how a lot of the folks on his route are homeschoolers, and that’s so neat, but Monkey had already turned back to the screen and left me to do damage control. So that was fun.

After the Bug Guy left I considered the errands I’d set for myself for the day, and eventually I did about half of them. Sure, I was driving home from one, thinking to myself, “Self, I am pretty sure we have no milk and no bread and probably nothing to eat for dinner,” but the TIRED, it won out. I skipped the grocery store, came home, and MacGyvered up a crock pot full of delicious soup made almost entirely from stuff I found during our forced freezer clean-out. (Scintillating freezer follow-up news: We’re going to stick with this one until it well and truly dies, I guess. It seems okay now that it’s been defrosted and plugged back in.) Later I made some gluten-free cornbread and at dinnertime I was all I SO TOTALLY PLANNED THIS AWESOME MEAL and the boys just nodded and pretended to believe me, because they’re great like that.

[In my defense, skipping the grocery store ended up making total sense to me because it’s near the bank and I need to go to the bank but yesterday was a bank holiday and WHY go to the store when the bank was closed when I’d just have to come back to the bank the next day? It made complete sense to me at the time. And now I’ve just realized that means I need to go to the bank and the store today. Crap.]

Anyway. Where was I going with this? Oh, right. THE POINT is that I was TRYING to be semi-productive, but as the day wore on, I felt more and more tired and yucky and I dragged and went slower and slower. By the time Monkey went to bed, I realized that maybe it was time to admit that I was… well, if not actually sick, certainly in need of some extra rest.

And yet! The part of my brain that was all “Work! Store! Bank! YOU LAZY!” was unhappy with me, and so—because I’ve been on a cleaning kick (see also: my office, steroid-fueled other cleaning)—I found myself in my bathroom, sorting through piles of stuff.

Yes, there were piles of stuff in my bathroom. I AM ASHAMED. Somehow it had become the last bastion of sloppy stuff-explosion as I’d worked my way through the house over the last few months. There were piles of things IN MY BATHTUB. (Hey, how often do I really take a bath, anyway? Not as often as I need a place to store that bulk order of cheap body wash, apparently.) I would clean out my bathroom and triumph over laziness!

In the end, I filled a couple of bags with stuff for Goodwill and reorganized a few things, but I didn’t finish. I felt crappy. I was tired and a little dizzy and in need of someone to stroke my forehead and call me “poor, poor little bunny.” Or I just needed to plop down on the couch and watch a DVRed episode of CSI. Either way. It was a start, though.

One of the things I found in my cleaning in there was an almost-empty bottle of Nyquil. It had maybe half a dose left in it. “Do you think half a dose of Nyquil will do anything?” I asked Otto, as we got ready for bed.

“It certainly can’t hurt,” he replied. I concurred, and drained the bottle. Surely it would help me sleep and I’d feel better in the morning.

This morning I awoke with a start about an hour later than I usually get up. Otto was in the shower and Monkey was finishing his breakfast and I was SO CONFUSED. Half a dose of Nyquil rendered me useless. I couldn’t figure out if I was hungover or sick or a little of each, but eventually I dragged myself into the kitchen to pack lunches and try to regain some semblance of lucidity. Shortly thereafter I waved the boys off and drank my weight in coffee, and now I believe I’m almost back to normal. I still feel kind of BLAH but I refuse to actually be sick. That will work, right?

Because apparently I still need to go to the bank and the grocery store and maybe even do some work, today. GEEZ.

16 Comments

  1. Rosie

    Nyquil gives me psychodelic dreams. I always wake up thinking, “Whoa, where did THAT come from?!”

  2. suburbancorrespondent

    I hate how it takes me SO LONG to figure out that I am sick and not just lazy and unmotivated.

  3. Tracy B

    I have been sick going on Day 9. It gets better and then comes back with a vengeance. Do I go to the doctor or not? That is the questions for today. I hope you don’t get this crude. Nyquil sounds really good right now.

  4. Chuck

    For me, it always seems to be travel that does it. Especially travel when I am stressed or tired. I get a cold over half the time. So now, I have a ritual of taking Airborne before and after the flight. I know there’s no scientific evidence that it helps, but for me it does seem to help – although it is not 100% either as I got a really bad cold last year after flying to Florida. At any rate, hope your ailment was just a case of the blahs and that you feel better soon!

  5. Michelle

    My college roomie was in every. single. production her four years there. Usually the lead female character. I remember after every single show she would be sick for a couple of weeks. Dead tired, really forgetful, no appetite, skipping class kind of sick. Now several years later we still keep in touch and the poor dear likely had fibromyalgia the entire time she was the star of the show. It takes A LOT of energy to get up, look good, speak clearly and make the audience laugh. Have a nap, Mir!

  6. Holly

    I agree with Michelle! Have a nap, it’ll help boatloads!

  7. Megan

    Sadly I can no longer take any over-the-counter tight time medicine. It gives me this weird anxiety where I’m exhausted and MUST SLEEP but for some reason I’m super, super worried that I’m doing it wrong. Because, you know, sleep is totally a judged event.

    Anyway, hopefully you’ll get some real sleep instead of that whack-you-over-the-head Nyquil sleep!

  8. Lucinda

    Good God. Go to bed already and just rest! Sheesh.

  9. Karen R

    Poor, poor little bunny. I hope your energy and motivation return soon.

  10. karen

    I hate nyquil! The Dreams! the wretched sleep and non-sleep.. the hangover!!!…

    Hope you’re feeling better already, Mir. –

    I thought I had an awesome gluten free sweet potato muffin recipe to share with you, but alas, I cannot find the recipe that has the same ingredients as the muffin I bought at the health food store, and I’m no genius when it comes to figuring out the amounts of each item that are IN it. but oooh man, what an awesome gluten free muffin it was. *sigh*

  11. laura

    If you are looking for permission to be sick I will gladly give it to you. Of course, if you just wanted to lay around the house and do nothing AND be well, I’m up for that too.

    I’ve been home from work for almost fifteen minutes and already have my jammies on. Yay me.

  12. Anna

    I wouldn’t go to the store on a bank holiday, either!
    I went to a family camp last summer, which had no.internet.available. In The Sticks, I tell you! I was really having a great time, glad that I didn’t stalk facebook all day long, and decided that I could DO THIS when I got home.
    Which, of course, I couldn’t! Because I need to talk to people, even just a little. I want to feel connected to the outside world and I want to know that people want to know I’m alive.
    So, back to facebook. Bah.

  13. Rocky Mountain Woman

    Ahhh…take a day off sweetie, it will do you a world of good…

  14. Karen.

    Do I ever hate Dave Hester. I know there has to be conflict to make a storyline, but that guy is just a jerk.

    And, I am sorry you are moderately miserable. I’m with those who don’t take any cold medicine — because of the wretched anxiety and wakefulness and dreams.

  15. Brigid

    After chaperoning a kindergarten field trip to the loudest museum known to man, I gave up and ordered pizza for dinner. After dinner I started mentioning the nighttime routine and motioned my kindergartener upstairs for bath. My third grader said “What time IS it?!” Um, 5:15. Yeah, so maybe not everyone was tired, but some of us were. Hmpf.

  16. Mamaspeak

    Wait…Storage Wars is FAKE??? (Yeah, that’s what I got from that post.)

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