My Story

The National Fatherhood Initiative ad at the top of my window is starting to make me feel guilty because I haven't been a dad today. Ah well, there's always tomorrow.

I've been stuck at home sick for four days now. I'm beyond ready to be finished with that. This morning my doctor said I would be sick for three days. English is his second language, though, and I'm not sure when those three days started. If they started Saturday morning then he's already wrong by a whole day. If they started this morning then three days may also be my countdown to complete insanity.

The following is a record of all of my extra-apartment dealings since I woke up sick Saturday morning:

Saturday afternoon: my water delivery came and I had to run downstairs to an ATM so I could pay for it.
Saturday evening: two block walk to E-Mart to get medicine and a stop at the convenience store on the first floor for saltines and poweraide
Monday morning: took a cab to school where one of the staffers met me and took me to see a doctor. After my shot in the tush, Jay dropped me off at E-Mart where I bought soup, Jell-o, and popsickles.
Tuesday morning: took a cab back to the doctor's for another stick in the heiny.
Tuesday afternoon: ran down to the convenience store for a toothbrush and a pair of socks

Besides that I've been stuck at home. Staying home sick is way better when you don't live alone. When you live alone it's boring, and there's no-one to distract you from the fact that you're sick, so you feel sicker than you need to.

Mostly I spent the time propped in my bed watching TV or movies. A person can only take so much of that, though, especially because I haven't been able to sleep much, so my days are extra long.

I've taken to calling home excessively. Since I have tonsillitis, it hurts to talk, so mostly I just listen to mom for as long as she can come up with things to talk about. I feel like I'm super in-the-know about all things Oklahoma Hurlbut right now.

I also take four or five showers a day. This isn't really because I'm bored, or even particularly dirty. It started out to try and regulate my hot and cold flashes, but after my fever broke I discovered that my throat hurts the least when I'm in the steam-filled bathroom. After a few showers they started to get boring, so I decided to mix things up a little. My cabinet contained a pile of sample spa products I've accumulated since I've been here, so I started adding spa treatments to my shower time. After a couple days of this I had a radiant complexion, baby soft skin, well-manicured nails, and silky smooth hair. I was also out of little packets of mud masks, ex foliating cream, hair packs, and body washes.

I spent the next couple showers lying on the bathroom floor running the shower at its hottest temperature and blasting jazz through the apartment. I'd pretend I was at a really classy sauna and make up all of the conversations I was having with the other people there. It only took two of these sauna visits, though, for me to find all the other guests shallow and uninteresting, so I decided to stop going. Today I started painting in the shower. I have a box of 24 colors of water-based poster paint. I've found that sitting on my shower floor with the water running and then painting on a wall that isn't being hit directly is perfect. The paints still run down the wall, but it's kind of a nice effect, and since your in the shower, it's super easy to clean your brushes when you're finished. Actually the whole work area can me cleaned in just a couple minutes. Unfortunately, this process includes washing your painting down the drain, too.

Sunday afternoon I decided to blow up my air mattress. I think the reasoning behind this decision was that I was uncomfortable (as tends to be the case when one is ill) and maybe I would be more comfortable on an air mattress (as is almost never the case, ever.) It took me two hours to blow it up. I spent about five minutes on it before I moved back into my bed. Sunday evening I decided that the air mattress would be much better if it was inside a fort (which is almost always the case.) I used to be a pro at building forts. I threw this one together pretty quickly using a laundry drying rack, an end table, a computer stool, an oscillating fan, two bed sheets, and a roll of duct tape. I climbed into the fort and before I'd even settled something heavy fell on my head and the whole fort collapsed around me. The heavy thing turned out the be the computer stool. I have a lot of outs on the failed fort, though. I was sick, for one thing, which meant that I was also in a hurry, because I knew I had limited energy. And also, I live on the eighth floor, and eight is an even number, and even numbers are bad for fort building, because squares collapse and triangles don't. So really it was a doomed endeavor from the beginning. I got back into bed.

On Monday evening I decided to clean up the collapsed fort. Letting the air out of the mattress took about two hours, but lucky for me I fell asleep half way through. The really lucky part is that I fell asleep on the air mattress, so it kept deflating while I slept.

Anyway, for dinner tonight I ate two pieces of French toast with jam. This was momentous. On Saturday and Sunday I was having major stomach problems, so my diet consisted of stray crackers, nibbles of toast, and apple peal. On Monday and Tuesday it was drastic throat problems, so my diet shifted to quarter cup servings of brothy soups and occasional half-eaten popsickles. In short, I was getting really hungry. My throat hurts quite badly again now, and I don't think I could pull off more than, say, a little oatmeal or rice, but for a few beautiful hours this evening the skies cleared and I ate real food.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.