It's been about three hours since the last time I coughed. It's a nice change. I feel like I might be turning the corner, physically anyway.

But a cloudy day spent mostly indoors, other than a dog walk in the light rain, seems to have left me rather blue.

I'm rather stressed over my consulting gig. I'm behind on my work for them since I've been so damn tired and sick.  On top of that they apparently had a couple of minor crises yesterday and I couldn't be available to help troubleshoot. I feel badly that I wasn't available for them, but I'm also really frustrated at how quickly my contract manager moved to extremes; at least one of the crises could have been avoided with just a little less, um, "freak out". I feel loyal to them for keeping me on full-time while I was going through really hard times, and while I need the money I know I can get another gig, even if it's just temp work from time to time, to help make up the difference. Bottom line is that I'm seriously considering canceling my contract. I just don't think it's worth the stress, but I'm worried about damaging my karma by "bailing" out on these folks earlier than I said I would.

Luckily, my full-time job is still going well. Some of my co-workers feel like it's a crazy environment, but it's nothing like the level of craziness I've dealt with in previous jobs (including the current consulting work). There are no personal attacks, no invasions of privacy, and generally few expectations of selling your soul to the company store.

On the personal side, there are also little threads of stress weaving in and out. There's the usual 'my-divorce-still-isn't-final' and 'I-still-can't-believe-i'm-getting-divorced' stress, and that's definitely weighing on me tonight. But since that's well-trodden subject matter, I'm going to skip the details and move to something I've alluded to for a little while: my grandma.

My grandma Alice, my mother's mother, is 80+ years old and is currently convalescing in San Antonio at a rehab/assisted living center. She broke her hip back in January and has been on the mend ever since. There was some thought, initially, that some other medical complications meant she was just weeks from death, but tough to the end, she is hanging in there and, frankly, making life hell for lots of folks from time to time.

Among other complications, grandma's care is causing major strife among the sibings. The issue is that the youngest kids, led by my aunt Deb/godmother, and to a certain extent, most of the oldest, are fully dedicated to grandma's care, meaning that someone must visit her in the rehab center every day, and when she is released, each sibling with a home will be responsible for housing and caring for her for a shift of a few months in that home. However, my mother and her oldest sister, who are 55 and 65 respectively, have made it known that they do not want their mother living with them. My mother has also been reluctant to visit grandma out in San Antonio as well.

You see, grandma isn't exactly grateful or happy when people come to see her or try to do things for her. Before she broke her hip, she stayed with my oldest aunt in El Paso for about 6 months and did her best to be miserable and to make my aunt miserable the entire time. That experience is what, I think, led both my mom and aunt to decide that grandma would not be welcome in their homes.

Naturally, the other siblings are pretty pissed about this. They feel that even if my mom doesn't support the decision to care for grandma in this way, she should still be willing to support the other siblings in that decision and therefore take part in grandma's care. I see both sides of this argument. My mom doesn't have a very close relationship with her mother, but she does have close relationships with her siblings, and in order to preserve those relationships, the sibs feel that mom should still take care of grandma, if for no other reason that the fact that they 'say so'. But mom and her oldest sis disagree, so now there is not so subtle retaliation going on--the younger sibs are no longer allowing the non-participants to use the family vacation timeshare which was left to them by their father--my mom's step-dad, my grandma's second husband. It's petty, but it is what it is, and I'm in the middle.

I've visited grandma in San Antonio a couple of times because my aunt Deb has asked me to fill in while she was out of town. I went because of my relationship with Deb and not because of my relationship with my grandma, which is pretty nonexistent. Deb has always supported me, and particularly so over the last year of this divorce evil, helping me out financially and using her connections to hook me up with a lawyer, not to mention putting me up on the weekend whenever I needed some human contact and family around me. I'm there if she asks me to be there. But I hate that she is giving my mom so much grief. I hate that they're at odds with eachother. My mom has her reasons, believe me, beyond that my grandma is being a pain now. (I'll deal with those reasons another time.)

It's late and I'm tired and stressed and a bit depressed and not getting to a point anytime soon. I hope that the family can weather the drama and come out as close as before. And I hope I can turn off my mind tonight and get some sleep. The Democratic county convention is tomorrow and I'm supposed to be there at 9. Don't know how I'm going to do it.

Damn. I just coughed. Guess it's time for my next dose of medicine. Good night, all.

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The sore throat is now a cough and head congestion, but no fever. I have to get out of the house soon, but first, a little note about grammar.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition

I'm a grammar-geek. I correct things as I read them without even thinking about it. Signs, articles, newsletters, etc. Some favorite books are Woe Is I and Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Not to say that I never make mistakes with grammar--on the contrary, I make them constantly and it's sort of my own private torture that the more I study the intricacies of language, the more I realize how off I am at times. But it's a hobby, I guess...and at worse a fetish--not a sexual one, you weirdos--but a fetish nonetheless.

Some brave kindred-spirits have embarked on a journey of typo correction around the country. I wish them godspeed and thank NPR for covering the story. How I wish the radio in my car worked! 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87937893

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I'm up with a sore throat. Ugh. I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick!

My throat is kinda' killing me.

When I swallow I feel it up into my stuffy ears. I don't know what happened...six hours ago I was fine, then all of a sudden a small tickle in my throat, a little congestion, and whammo...please just let it be a cold and not the flu again.

Oh well, nothing to do about it now. So now to recap...

Despite a breakdown on its lone rainy day, this has been an extremely productive and positive week for me.

Work wise I've crossed a number of tasks off my list and I feel like I'm hitting my stride with a few of my business sponsors and with this beast of a product database that is involved in most of my projects, thank goodness.

On the home front, I've been purging the house of old papers and assorted junk, recycling what I can, and finally have ditched all the old clothes that are, thankfully, now several sizes too big for me. They're in bags in the car waiting to be taken to Goodwill tomorrow on the way to San Antonio. I also sent all my Easter cards out on time and planned ahead to have a little basket to give to my grandma when I see her tomorrow.

In cleaning up and organizing I've also started to turn my eye toward decorating too. I replaced the garnet colored candles on the living room mantle with saffron-colored tapers, and I'm on the lookout for just the right shade of bright, filmy gold curtains for the windows. I'm tackling one room at a time in an attempt to both simplify and beautify the 'feel' of each. 

Lastly, in a calm and reflective manner I sorted through and organized the photos and mementos that have been haunting my home since I stuffed them away almost a year ago. Not everything went into boxes, though--there are a number of things I've chosen to keep as part of my decor, mostly gifts of one sort or another...like the little crystal turtles he gave me on our wedding day and first anniversary, and the carved quartz cat we bought in Monterrey. The most important thing that went into boxes were the few special dresses I saved over the years---what I wore the night he proposed, the night of our wedding shower at his parents' house, and his favorite dress--the one I wore so many times on special occassions and on our honeymoon too. No tears at all, just the occassional distant flash of anger and lots of head shaking. I still, after all this time, cannot quite believe it.

There's another dress I kept...a dress I've never worn and have been keeping at the back of my closet. I bought it in October at a little boutique in Nashville. It's a summery, blousy ivory number, short but not too short, with little flower appliques and cutouts at the neck, nape, and hemline. It's lovely and simple and I bought it because I loved it and because I wanted to do something tangible to express my faith. You see, as soon as I saw it I knew it should be a wedding dress, the dress I would wear when we renewed our vows, when we found our way back together. I don't know if I'll ever wear that dress, but I'm not throwing it out. It's too lovely. Perhaps I'll save it for some other special day. I'm not sorry I bought it. I'm glad I believed so strongly that I felt in my heart I would have the opportunity to wear it.

It's much later now and exhaustion is finally winning out over the sore throat. I'm off to bed. G'night.

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It's Friday night, ten o'clock, and I'm in bed, dozing off and on. Sounds a mite pathetic taken out of context, but trust me, this a moment of quiet triumph. You see, I've been ridiculously ill this week, and dozing means I'm neither coughing my brains out nor wincing against the pain behind my eyes.

It's a sign of how sick I've been that I'm currently pleased to have only a slight fever, just under 100; I've been running a fever for four days straight now, usually between 100 and 102. I'm not sure if it's the fever or the medicine or a combination of both, but I am increasingly loopy, so that I sort of always feel a little asleep, and just before I actually do fall asleep I feel, for lack of a better word, floaty.

I like it, this floatiness. I wish it were attainable by some means other than a cocktail of Halls Mentho-lyptus cough drops, Tussionex prescription cough syrup (with hydrocodone), Albuterol (yes, they gave me a puffer), Levaquin, ibuprofen, acetamenophin (alternated to keep the fever down), and my usual meds, all marinated in a moist, warm cloud of camphor via my new Vicks vaporizer. [It's like I upended a Walgreens into a blender, isn't it?]

Outside my windows, the fog and drizzle match the fuzziness in my head if not the warmth. Sigh. I'm so grateful to have a roof over my head; to have a job that's actually encouraged me to stay home and get well; to have insurance when so many others are going without; to have friends and family who care for me and have called just to see if I'm feeling better; to have groceries in my fridge; and to have my health only slightly and temporarily marred by this little bout of sickness. I'm grateful for a lot more, including all those prescriptions mentioned above, but I'm starting to fall asleep again. You get the picture. I wish I could write more coherantly about what I'm feeling, but the meds just aren't going to let that happen.

And so, good night and pleasant dreams to all...wishing you warm, fuzzy, floatiness.

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