Aaaand I'm sick again

 Don't get me wrong, I am totally grateful that I didn't get sick before we went to Charlotte, and it's not terribly surprising that I'm sick soon after getting back. It would have been nice to do library orientation without being half-high on cold meds and worrying about coughing fits, but whatever. I am still starting Operation De-Crapify The House, but slowly, because even colds with me tend to take a long time to depart fully, and I don't want to be dumb. Early on it seemed to be moving at a really fast clip, like those days when the wind is so strong the clouds seem to be moving across the sky at accelerated video speed. One and a half days of alarmingly sore throat, one and a half days of absolutely apocalyptic snot levels, and then everything settling down to just annoying. I am leaning on my anti-inflammatory inhaler hard, and started using the narcotic cough syrup right away in an attempt to forestall the Cough of Death, which has plagued me my entire life except for a bit of a break during Covid, before I got Covid. Should I just everywhere I go? I probably should, I did it for two years. Do I want to? No, I do not. I've done it a couple of times and found it surprisingly hard to go back. 

On the apocalyptic snot day, I was gratefully distracted by Early Morning Riser, a book recommended by Nicole. Nicole and I have a very small intersection in our reading Venn diagrams (I hope I said that right, if not let's put it down to sickness and not dumbness?), but every now and then there's a smash hit, and I am so, so grateful this one came along right when I really needed an escape from my aching head. The next day I woke up feeling like I'd watched a really amazing movie, with scenes still playing in my head, and then I realized it was the book (I'm pretty sure this wasn't just fever-generated). I think Nicole said it was hard to describe what it was about, which it is, but what struck me before I started reading it was that it has been lauded by the New York Post, The New York Times and the Washington Post, but also by E! and Pop Sugar. It is bright and sometimes deceptively simple, containing bittersweet insight into the casual cruelty of the universe under the bubbles. I loved it. I LOVED it.

I did not necessarily intend for the picture to be that alarmingly huge, but here we are. 

Eve has been spending much of the week in the lab where she'll be doing her fourth-year thesis project. This is weird since she only started university a few weeks ago - oh wait, she actually has been there for three years? Okay fine, you're tripping but whatever. It's been a lot - yesterday she left the house at eight and didn't get home until seven. This is because she's doing a bunch of lab orientation stuff with everyone who works in the lab, in addition to her other classes. After this week it will be more self-directed. But the fact that she Facetimed me after that eleven-hour day and was still pretty fired-up about how cool the lab is, and she gets her own little bench and her own little lab notebook with her name on it, and her own project (in some labs the undergrads only do the grunt work of the grad students) is pretty cool. She's also been to a lot of parties. One was Costco themed, so her roommate made them these labels (they live on Newton Ave.)



I thought it was brilliant. (We did catch the typo).

Now, to step one in de-crapifying. At some point I collected a bunch of random items from upstairs and put them in a spare wastebasket to bring down. How long ago was that? Many, many moons. I finally brought it down and am now bemusedly surveying the contents: canned bubble tea, the ridiculous over-packaging from my nasal spray, an Ottawa Senators pencil case that must be at least 11 years old, dog pee carpet spray (okay, that one's going back up), video games from two systems ago, and a single East Nepean Little League Celtics baseball sock (I think I was intending to try to use it as a lick sleeve after Lucy had her surgery, but honestly, who the hell knows).

Sometimes I imagine my guardian angel gesturing at me while looking around at all the other guardian angels going "LOOK! LOOK what I have to work with!" 

See you tomorrow for Friday randoms, which will be completely different from this post, which is a carefully-planned, cohesive essay.

(outtake for your amusement)