A Mighty Fine Life

So I felt quite a bit better Sunday and Monday, and then Tuesday woke up with an incredibly sore throat and started having coughing fits. Came home early from work, stayed home today, and have been "working from home" which means "sitting on the couch watching TV" (and occasionally coding stuff for work, but they've only contacted me, like... twice all day).

Flipping channels led to me watching Catch That Kid on Disney XD, because it stars bitty Corbin. (Also bitty Kristen Stewart.) So it's extremely bad, but there's this love triangle subplot where Corbin and the Other Dude are both in love with K-Stew (even though they're, like... 13?) and refuse to help her rob the bank to save her father (the "plot," as it were) until she decides which one of them she wants to date. So she gives them each half of an "I love you" heart necklace and tells each one not to tell the other. Hijinks ensue, etc etc, and anyway, it turns out, Corbin has always come across as wicked gay on screen. It was mildly disconcerting. He was a baby.

(Well, 14 if my math is right, but he looks super duper younger than that.)

Also in the last scene of the movie, K-Stew makes the boys turn around while she tries to decide which one of them to go out with, and then she runs away and leaves them discussing how they'll always be best friends, no matter what.

I really need to not slash Disney movies quite so hard. Speaking of which... *cough*

And now I may go back to bed. WHY AM I STILL SICK? Blehhhh.

I'm sick. It's the first time I've been really full-on sick in awhile and I forgot how much it sucked. I got home from work yesterday, went to bed at 7, woke up at 10 to have dinner and was asleep again by 11, woke up at 6 AM to get a drink, fell back asleep until 10:30, napped from 2:30 until 6. And I usually love sleeping! But this isn't restful and I can't breathe through my nose at all so my lips are all chapped. I've been taking sudaphed but can't find any ibuprofin and I have a killer headache and also my back is sore from, you know, lying in bed for 24 hours.

Typing this is using all the energy I have. I can't even read, because I can't concentrate on the text. Which means I also can't write or edit, even though I really want to.

BOO.

What I'm saying, in short, is that you should all write me happy, fluffy drabbles because I am grumpy and sad and can't breathe. I will happily reciprocate at some point when my brain is no longer crowded out of my skull by snot.

I'm still sick and super whiny about it. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Here, have a meme.

Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post in the comments.

I felt about 50% better this morning. I actually started feeling better over night, because I was lying awake in bed. Not because I couldn't breathe (unlike the previous night), but because when I'm super anxious about something, my brain DOES NOT turn off, so I spent the entire night in an endless loop of worries about the project launch today.

So: my throat is really raw and I'm kind of stuffy and headachey on and off, but doing better.

The project launch. It went... Well. Like, almost worryingly so. Not perfectly of course. But not only better than my stupid brain feared, but actually well. Which meant it only took, you know... four hours? Something like that. BUT IT'S DONE. MOTHERFUCKING DONE. (If you're curious: thebody[dot]com. I'm way too tired to bother looking up the noreferral thingie. Basically, the front page was entirely redesigned, and the entire site was widened out to 1000px, which involved overhauling all of the templates we run on, and all of the style sheets we use. I did this essentially on my own [except for the forums] and in about two and a half weeks.)

And then there was the weekly mailing.

And basically at that point I collapsed, because I started feeling sick again, and I'm SO EXHAUSTED. They actually sent me home early (well, 40 minutes early, but since I'm usually at least an hour late, that's saying something.) And several people congratulated me on my way out, because this thing has been all consuming.

Deep breath.

It's done.

FINALLY.

Nah, I take that back. I am going in for a half day now. Fingers crossed, we will launch the massive project of doom this afternoon.

Hey, I can almost move again without wanting/needing to collapse! That's a step.

I feel wretched.

I'm still going to work.

God damn work ethic.

Fuck the work ethic. I'm going back to bed. Oh my god my heaaaaaaaaaaad. My ability to breaaaaathe. *cries*

I went to work for the first time in a week and a half today. Luckily, it was not the mess I feared, and nothing exploded without me. On the other hand, absolutely nothing I did today went right, and I could feel myself getting sick as I sat at my desk. Things I did not have this morning but do now: a stuffed up head, a sore throat, and a headache.

In much better news, I'm halfway through season two of Avatar, after marathoning season one in two sittings with Margot over vacation. Oh my GOD. I love everything about the show. If it had been around when I was 13, I'd have written the world's most EPIC Mary Sue about how I need to hug Zuko IMMEDIATELY and then fix his broken life. Because poor baby is BROKEN and I LOVE HIM.

That's all I got. Dinner now; then Tylenol PM and collapsing in bed.

I've been asleep for 15 of the last 24 hours.

I feel quite a bit better, though!

So...I've been feeling a bit under the weather this week. Bleh. So today, the managing editor -- also feeling a bit sick -- picked up some Tylenol Cold and offered me some.

We realized after the fact it was nighttime medication. We realized that when we both -- well, mostly me -- completely lost the ability to do work. It was startling like being drunk, actually; I couldn't type well, I couldn't keep track of conversations, I all but collapsed. I've never reacted like that to anything before -- codine helps me sleep, but neither benadryl nor nyquil even makes me sleepy. I don't know what it was.

But I left work at 3:30, got home at 4, and slept until 7. Now I'm going back to bed, because I'm still exhausted. Weird.

In other news, Rachel and I just watched four episodes of Greek. CAPPIE. MARRY ME. THROUGH THE TV! That is all.

So the giant project I alluded to last night did not get finished. This is because my other, more immediate project--redesigning our weekly e-mail--was more important, as we wanted to use it for today's e-mail. Aaaaand it broke totally in gmail. I still don't know why, but was able to fix it. Took a few hours. The rest of the time I spent staring at the wall. Then I went home.

I feel gross. Physically exhausted, like, completely sore all over. Why? Who knows? I'm stuffed up and my head hurts. And I can't do anything because looking at both the computer and the TV makes my head worse (yeah, I'm heading off the computer after I finish whining), and reading printed text makes me dizzy. So more staring at the wall is on the schedule.

I don't want to miss work tomorrow, but unless I wake up feeling much better, I probably will. And I'm worried about how much I'm going to sleep tonight, seeing as how I napped for four hours. So perhaps it will be staring at the ceiling instead of the wall.

Basically, what I'm saying is, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

Came home from work sick. This does explain why I've been so exhausted lately, at least. As a coworker put it, I've been fighting a bug. And I lost.

And now to sleep.

I think this is my crazy fangirl face. (More at Rachel's flickr.)

Despite the, uh, part where they lost (eyeroll), it was quite a lovely day. Seriously. The prediction was rain, but instead it was 60 and sunny out. Rachel and I were on the ball enough to bring sunscreen (because we are vampirically pale and would spontaneously burst into flame otherwise), which meant that the sun was quite lovely. And like, seriously, warm enough that we both stripped off the jackets and sweatshirts, which for those of you who know me and that I prefer temperatures approaching jungle-like, was quite remarkable. Our seats were about three quarters of the way back on the third base side; upper deck, but near the front. They were actually damn near perfect, because the lower decks were all in shadow, and from our understanding, it was cold where there was no sun. So ha!

And yes, I kept hydrated.

Also fun was that we were sitting next to the Tiniest Yankees Fan. He was with his dad, and probably about three, and decked out in full, adorable gear. Obviously, being a toddler, he didn't really have much of an attention span, but was adorably entertaining throughout.

The boys lost, but there was an entertaining rally in the 8th that kept it from being a total downer. If the A hadn't been running shuttle bus (oy) even the trip home would have been fine.

I, on the other hand, am still completely stuffed up -- but not sick in the way I was all week. Like, this is clearly still the flu, and I'm coughing, but I feel like a person again, capable of thought and movement and digesting food. So this is all very positive. (Regardless, I'm off to take cough syrup and go to bed. Yay for sleep!)

Ha! A few hours ago, I had soup and crackers and felt fine afterwards, and just recently was hungry and actually had a bowl of spaghetti and I'm still fine!

This is particularly exciting, not only because I didn't puke, but also because the last time I had a meal was, uh...Monday. Being sick completely wiped out any drive to eat I had, so I'd been subsisting on juice, crackers, and jello cups. (Strawberry/raspberry is delicious.)

But now I have eaten! And while still stuffy and occasionally coughing, I feel about 85% better! So yeah, probably good that I didn't go to work today. Even though I really, really, really hate missing work. (Seriously, I don't think I've missed four days of work since...ever, actually.)

So half an ago I got abruptly dizzy, light headed, shaky, and kind of nauseus. I figured this was from not eating much in the last few days, as being sick makes me really, really not hungry at all, so it's been pretty much just crackers and jello. So, assuming caloric intake would help, I hesitantly ate a cracker.

Ten minutes later I threw the cracker back up.

It's the first time I've puked since I've been sick...actually the first time I've puked without alcohol being involved since middle school. So much for how much better I was feeling today. Guess I won't be going to work tomorrow after all. I had such high hopes.

(Rachel was kind enough to get up and sit with me, even though she had a 14 hour workday today, and there wasn't actually anything she could do other than listen to me whine and get me water and tissues. She is genuinely the best big sister ever. ♥)

By the way, I haven't got the vaguest idea how to correctly spell "nauseus." But I'm sick and I don't care.

Yep, staying home again, as per orders from poisonivory. Something about actually sleeping after you've been the hospital (but to be fair, I was only in the hospital for 20 minutes, and that was just to get the x-rays, which were negative! So whatever.). I'll probably go in tomorrow, though, because I hate missing work.

--

As we were getting ready for bed last night, harriet_vane let some of her magical writing approach slip. I thought a few people might appreciate it: "In case of emergency, I always write about how Ryan has a scarf."

--

I am off to drink some juice, shower, and eat some jello, and drink some more juice (I really don't want to get dehydrated again). If you're interested in keeping me entertained whilst I'm home sick, feel free to hit me with the fuck/marry/kill meme...even though I feel genuine guilt at having to kill people sometimes. Sensitive soul that I am.

So at 4:15, I arrived home from my doctor's appointment.

The appointment began at 10:20 this morning.

It was a very long day, which involved getting my vitals taken five times (apparently they were that bad), a chest X-ray, several hours spent sitting in the dark drinking juice, and finally an hour hooked up to an IV.

How was your day?

(ETA: It's just the flu, and hit me super hard because of the dehydration. Probably should have made that clear earlier.)

So I didn't feel so hot yesterday. I was up much of the night with rolling waves of nausea and an inability to breathe, anyway. But I finally caught a couple hours around dawn, and (especially given I took a sickday a couple weeks ago) figured that showering to clear some of the gunk out of my head would help. So I got up, showered, got dressed, and dragged myself 140 blocks downtown to my job.

Where I sat at my desk for ten minutes, then realized that this just ain't happening, got up, and dragged myself 140 blocks home (with a quick pitstop to buy more sudaphed and tissues).

I'm disconcerted by how sick I've been this year.

So I'm still coughing up a storm and, due to the napping today, have totally fucked up my sleep schedule and am now not going to get much sleep tonight, which sucks. I'm going to work tomorrow, though; I just hate taking days off and I really don't feel sick enough to justify it. I have no symptoms other than coughing, wtf? (Well. And now my throat hurts, because it's the really raw, racking kind of cough that causes ache, apparently.)

Today was actually pretty nice, though. The cat barely attacked me at all! And I spent it mainlining Newsies fic, which was excellent. I read everything I hadn't already ready by lielabell and then everything I hadn't already read by cymbalism219. They are both so good. I really just feel like the Newsies fandom is excellent right now; it's small and fun and full of goodfic and nice people. I know I go through phases of being super into it (like, oh, now) and times when I'm not so much, but I'm always so happy it's there to go back to. It's like coming home.

♥ to everyone on my flist.

(ETA: in my last entry, btw, I discuss various pairings: Jack/Race, Mush/Blink, Spot/Race, and -- totally not my fault -- Teddy/Denty. More requests are welcome; I'm having fun!)

Hooray, I have an appointment for Tuesday, 6PM. My doctor does indeed take my new insurance, so that's good.

Yes, this entry was an excuse to write that down somewhere I won't lose or forget about it.

Also, I think I will use the excuse of being home sick today to go do my laundry. Because lordy, do I need to do that. Ught.

I'm staying home from work today. I never do that, because I always feel a horrible crushing guilt about it, but the cough I've had since last Friday hasn't cleared up yet (it's gotten worse) and -- here's the ridiculous part -- it's the first time since November I haven't been working on a huge, massive project of some sort. If I had pressing stuff to do at work, I'd go in anyway; I hate getting behind and not getting stuff done. But as it is, there's nothing that needs my attention that badly, as if I'm going to be a miserable, coughing mess all day, I'd rather do it lying in bed.

My goal is to call my former doctor later today and find out if he takes my new insurance; if not, to find someone who does and get a doctor's appointment. Because even though I don't feel super sick (the cough and a sore throat from coughing so much are my only actual symptoms), having racking coughing fits every five minutes is not good or normal.

Uggggggght. And now to sleep for an hour or two.