Invitation to My Small Pity Party

This winter has been really difficult - mainly physically instead of mentally, which I guess is kind of a nice change? Just after my fibroid surgery I was offered a surgery leave at a school that was a longer commute, and I accepted it just before I got the worst flu of my life. We were supposed to go to Florida for March Break to visit my mother-in-law and her husband at their summer house. I ordered Matt and Eve to go without me and said I'd be fine.

Narrator: She was not fine.

In retrospect, this was not the smartest. My parents are nearby, and my mom sent over chicken soup. But she sent it with my dad, who, being a lot like me, assumed I wanted him to come in, leave the soup on the counter, and leave without checking on me. He was right. I did want that. But I was so delirious with fever that I thought I was doing inventory in a really cool warehouse for most of one day, and too weak to lift my phone at one point, so it probably wasn't a great idea. My sister, when she heard, was not impressed.

It's okay. I survived. Matt and Eve got upgraded to first class because, I don't know, they clearly missed me so much, and Eve felt terribly guilty (not too guilty to eat her warmed-up cashews, fortunately). But just as I was barely recovered, we started five week-ends of travel, to Elmira to see Angus and watch baseball, to Vegas for a friend's fiftieth birthday, to my sister's for Easter, and then more Angus and more baseball. This was all great, but didn't give me any down time. At the same time, the bone spur inflammation in my foot got worse so I was hobbling around in pain and off balance for months.

It takes a toll on a girl, ya know? I'm mostly enumerating this because this week I was so happy that the sun was shining and it was book fair week, and I was hanging out with the super-fun and funny principal and V.P. at my Wednesday school who are just so lovely and have the same twisted sense of humour as me, and we were selling books and stupidly-shaped erasers and five-dollar posters to excited kids, and then I'd come home and be weepily exhausted and unable to face cooking dinner, and I couldn't figure out why. Until I figured out why, and Hannah comfortingly confirmed my theory.

I have a great life. I have privilege out the wazoo. I get frustrated with myself when I can't work a stupid part-time job and at least do the bare minimum at home. Turns out my body doesn't care that I need to demonstrate my love and gratitude by cooking and cleaning and that I'd like to demonstrate my love of fitting into my jeans by walking around the park once in a while. I finally found a good chiropodist and my foot is slowly improving thanks to being horrifyingly jackhammered with a taser wand once a week. Sorry, the technical term is "extracorporeal shockwave therapy". I wonder what would happen if they used it intracorporeally - bet it would make a good horror movie. I've been able to properly walk Lucy a couple of times in the past week. Other than that, I guess I just need some rest.

So I've learned my lesson. This week-end we're.... going to Toronto.

Oh well. Store-bought quiche and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner next week.