the only way in and out is birth and death
September 26, 2011

I find it mind-boggling that there is an American city of HALF A MILLION PEOPLE that is nearly impossible to get in and out of--but there is.

And I have a business meeting there next week.

Honest to god, it's getting dicey for me. This kind of shit is calculated to push every button on my brain's whacked out control panel. Seriously. Lack of Control? check. Fear of the unknown? check. Resentment of the expectations of others? check. Sense of injustice? check.

I am having a hell of a struggle to get past the panic enough to actually address the issues, and then to find out I have to go to a place where people seem to be universally exhibiting a rude, insensitive, and uncaring attitude, so actually trying to solve problems is nearly impossible? The whole mess starts all over again.

And the fact that I'm sick as a dog doesn't help, either. Spouse brought his annual back-to-school germ-swapping crud home last week, and this one was a DOOZY. Fever, chills, sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fuzzy-headedness, fatigue, a head packed to the rafters with snot, and body aches that make you feel like you've been beaten with a sack of doorknobs. I woke up with it on Friday, sent an email to my boss saying I wasn't coming in, and spent the weekend in flu hell. Crawled out for: Friday--Wally's for medicine and other sick supplies (tissues, teabags, Sierra Mist, tomato soup & grilled cheese supplies, etc.) Saturday--grocery shopping, Sunday--laundry (since the dryer died, we decided to just haul it all over to the laundromat, and work together to get it all done in one fell swoop. LOVE IT.)

And truly, that is about it for the weekend. Everything else is a fuzzy blur of bed, fiddling around on the net, taking more cold medicine, drinking huge quantities of tea, soup, and juice, living on toast, and finally feeling enough better by Sunday afternoon to make a simple recipe for actual food. I took a pork shoulder and made pulled pork in the crockpot. We had that and hash brown patties for dinner last night. It tasted pretty good to our poor, cold-benighted senses of taste. It could actually taste horrid; we have no way of knowing! Probably fine, though. We have another chance to find out tonight--we are having the exact same thing. It was a 3.29 lb. piece of meat--quite a bit of leftovers!