pain

by

Ginormous Headache

My head hurts like nobody’s business, right at the base of my skull in the back.  I slept wrong.  I wear this eye pillow.  It was cockeyed, plus my regular down pillow had slipped under my shoulders, so I awoke basically balanced on this little lump of eye pillow and my skull screaming in pain.  Every time I turn my head, I see white light and feel like vomiting.  The only thing that alleviates the pain is to stab my thumb or a finger deep into the tight muscle.  Unfortunately because of the angle, my arm cannot twist that direction very well.  I’ve tried stretching my neck to the front and back, left and right, to no avail.  This is so much fun.  I think I’m going to have to try an NSAID, and I generally avoid taking medications for such things.  Only for this, I don’t care.  It hurts that much.

I don’t know why I”m blogging about this.  It’s kind of a ridiculous subject.  But I told myself I would write some blurb every morning and all I can think about right now is this headache and Vantucky.  I know.  It’s silly.  There is a town next to Portland called Vancouver.  Portlanders call it Vantucky.  The reasons for this are self-evident.  Boyfriend is going to Vantucky this morning and he called me on the way. For some reason, the word Vantucky is stuck in my head, along with the headache, and the lyrics to Judy Garland singing I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.  It’s quite a combination, I can assure you.  The song is getting annoying.  It’s been crawling around in my head, worming its way through the neurons for days now.  I’m ready to be rid of it.  I will have to listen to something else over and over and over in an effort to make it go away.  Then that song might get stuck, but at least it will be a different song.  Last week it was Cape Verdean Blues.  I did not mind that song being in my head.  It flittered around, showing up periodically.  I would hum bars of it here and there.  It did not sit insiduously on one line for hours like the chasing rainbows number.  No.  It was a pleasant visitor.  Chasing rainbows is like a houseguest who has overstayed her welcome, leaving empty dishes around the house with food stuck in them and her underwear in the bathroom with the crotch up.  I want her to leave me.

I’m off to take drugs to try to obliterate this headache, then I need to take my baby to school.  Hopefully by the time I return home the drugs will have kicked in and this pain will have been alleviated.  If not, I’ll poke a nail in my hand.  It would probably feel better than this wretched headache.

by

Molly

Woke up this morning to my dog Molly having a major seizure.  Her head was all twisted to the left her spine all to the right she could not stand she was shitting and pissing herself and her eyes were pointing in opposite directions.  It was horrible.  I’m kind of weirded out by the fact that last night I was writing about my other dog’s death, something I haven’t written about in months and I woke up to this happening.

I took her to the vet and she was not optimistic.  However since Molly seemed to improve over the course of the visit, we decided to allow her to come home and say bye to everyone.  Through the day, she improved to about 95% normal.  If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t know she is still off.  She’s got this Picasso look to her eyes.  They’re kind of cattywompus.  I took her back to the vet this afternoon and we have adopted a wait and see attitude.  As long as she seems to be comfortable and her quality of life is decent, she gets to stay with us, but we’re clearly on a track out.  It is most likely Molly has a brain tumor.  I could spend a thousand bucks to try and find out what is wrong, but there is obviously neurologic damage and even knowing wouldn’t improve her long-term prognosis, so I’m just going to let what it is run its course.

I’m too tired to say any more than this.  I sobbed all morning long.  I’m spent.  Grief takes energy and now mine is gone.

by

Toxic Snake Pits and Hateful People

Imagine starting your work day every day going somewhere and never knowing what you will encounter upon walking in the door. Some days you may be able to go to your desk and do your job and nothing out of the ordinary happens. Most days you have to walk by someone who, depending on her mood, may or may not say hello. If it’s a bad mood, then the silence is louder than a hello would have been. All days you know that your steps are being monitored, that if one of the people who take pleasure in causing others harm can see you, they are reporting your actions to another person who likes to cause others harm, the two of them deriving pleasure from their perceived power in knowing your whereabouts. Imagine too that if you have to interact with someone who is supposed to help you in your job, most likely any requests you make will be met with hostility for sure, and probably require more than one attempt on your part to get the needed request accomplished. Add to this mix that the boss of the place does not stop any of this sort of activity, but would prefer to pretend it does not happen. If something must be done and you finally must ask the boss for intervention, he will sympathize with your plight and do nothing further than ensure it gets done. In the ensuring, he will sympathize with that person’s hating you for no reason, but just plead for a bit of assistance. Top all of this off with the fact that the type of work you do requires you take personal responsibility for all the actions of all the staff because you took an oath that requires such personal responsibility. This means that ultimately, the buck stops with you. If something is not done or not done correctly, you are responsible, even if you were not aware of the misapprehension.

This was life where I worked for several years, off and on. This was the place that forced me to reevaluate who I am, forced me to grow a spine of steel, made me more cynical, and threw a wrench into my faith in humanity. If tough situations make you grow, then I’m the beanstalk. And that’s okay, at least on some levels. But it is a fucking nightmare on others. It would be amazing indeed, if I could actually put that place behind me and never have to have anything, and I mean anything ever to do with it again.

I worked at this law firm immediately upon graduating law school and passing the bar. Within six months of starting at the place, I was utterly miserable. It was a horrible place to work, toxic and cruel. Kindness was not a part of the lexicon there. After a year my doctor told me that if I did not quit, the likelihood of a heart attack and even death was a possibility from the stress of it all. I quit, claiming hostile work environment, and the state paid me unemployment. The owner of the firm where I had worked seemed geniunely sorry for this state of affairs and gave me quite a lot of contract work. I also started practicing on my own and did quite well until the laws changed and my practice evaporated into thin air.

I spent a year looking for work. I took a job for a few months as in house counsel at an internet marketing company, but worked myself out of the job. A few months after that I took a job as a paralegal at a collections firm. During this time other monstrous things happened in my life that demanded my focus. Perhaps it was best I wasn’t working for a firm. I don’t know. Throughout this time I stayed in touch with the owner of the firm where I had started. I’ll call him Fred. I liked Fred and respected his knowledge as an attorney. All the lawyers I worked with there had become close friends. We had all been in a place that was almost like a war zone, comforting one another and celebrating each time one or another found a job elsewhere.

Then a year ago the last of the lawyers from our original group of 7 found another job. The practice was bustling and Fred was desperate to fill the spot with an experienced attorney. He had too much work and could not afford the time to train another lawyer. My friend suggested he hire me back. Our area of law is highly specialized and there just aren’t lawyers out there looking who know it. I figured after the year I had been through, the people in his office would not faze me. Plus he had two offices and I would be in the one away from the people who were especially unpleasant. I took the job with my eyes wide open and thought I could make it in spite of what it had been like previously.

I was so wrong. In the last year I came to realize that the bitter and nasty office manager and all the miserable staff members were that way because Fred allows and in many ways encourages their actions. He knows how his office manager handles things. When situations come up, he disappears and lets the shit hit the fan. When one employee comes to him to complain about the other, he doesn’t try to find out what happened. He appeases the complainer by agreeing with them about how bad the other person is. Then when the other person comes to him to discuss the same situation, he turns and criticizes the original person who complained. He is always playing both sides of the fence. I believe he does this because he is so conflict averse, he can’t fathom telling one person or another that they need to change their behavior, to put up or shut up. Instead he lets them continue to act the way that they do and even goes along with it.

As an example of the kind of Lord of the Flies nastiness I’m talking about, the office manager routinely sends disparaging emails about other employees, “accidentally” sending them to the wrong person or the whole office. She once “accidentally” sent an attorney in the office an email meant for one of the staff members who is often as nasty and passive aggressive as she is. The email said that yet another staff member was fat, smelly, and smoked too much. Another time, she sent an email saying that having me as an attorney working for them was “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” Of course, the way things are in that office, another employee printed it up and put a copy in my box. Another time several of the staff members did not like the post-maternity clothes one of the female attorneys wore after she had a baby. They thought they made her look fat. In “protest,” the group of them wore jeans to work for a week. Since the office manager was part of the group “protesting” it was not likely any of the staff members would have been sanctioned for failure to adhere to the dress code. Such a pleasant place to work.

Clients too are constantly being short-changed, ignored, patronized, and generally get nothing for the money they paid. Over and over and over I would get a call from a client who had tried for weeks to reach someone who had not returned their call. They finally changed their tack and asked for someone else in an effort to get an answer to their question. As an attorney, I was responsible for correcting files paralegals had put together. The paralegals who did not like me would not make the changes, leaving the client to stammer and stutter to the trustee why something in their petition wasn’t right. The disparaging names for clients around the office were bitter and laced with hate. It was a poisonous place to work.

Finally in November when another employee who had no business monitoring me at all called me a liar over a trivial situation, I threw up my hands and said I quit. The culture of disrepect in the place was more than I could bear. Fred asked me to stay until the end of the year, which I did, but only because I genuinely cared for the clients I worked for. I wanted things to work out for them. I wanted their cases to proceed smoothly.

Ours is a small legal world. Everyone knows everyone else or someone who knows that someone else. I had a case where my client ended up filing for bankruptcy because of the actions of another attorney I knew from law school. Not only did she screw up the case on which she provided representation, she also advised him to pay her with a credit card before filing. This was against the law. Legal action ensued against my client. The response stated he lacked intent to defraud, and that the attorney who took the payment was responsible; she knew better, or should have. The attorney who had taken the payment went berserk. She claimed the client was a liar. She claimed I lacked “professional courtesy” for standing up for my client instead of her. She danced around every which way and even brought the partners of her firm in to bat for her.

During the middle of all this, I left my firm. The new attorney handling the case was as upset by the facts as I was. The client was in a particularly precarious position because the trustee in his case could have taken a malpractice award from him to pay other creditors, leaving him still owing the credit card company. He was doubly screwed.

Several weeks ago, Fred called me to ask about facts I had discussed with him about eight times previously. However he’s not exactly a dedicated listener, so I wasn’t surprised I was reiterating this information to him yet again. He had a settlement conference scheduled with the other firm and needed the details again to understand our client’s position. I genuinely cared for the client and wanted to do right by him since so many attorneys had failed him in their “assistance” even though I had no desire to do anything for free for Fred ever again. Another charming facet of Fred’s character is his absolute unwillingness to part with his money. When I left the firm, I had grossed for the year two-thirds of what I had netted when I worked there previously. He claimed he paid me less because business was slow, but I knew better. I knew the filing numbers and client numbers. The fact is, he’s cheap and lots of attorneys leave because of money as well as the toxic work environment. Anyway, I answered his questions and discussed the case because I really care about this client. He’s a nice guy who got totally screwed as far as I was concerned. It was up to us to help make things better.

Well, last week I discovered that Fred, at the settlement conference, sold me up the river to avoid conflict and to settle the case. He advised the other lawyer’s firm partners to pay to settle the case because it would cost too much to fight. The lawyer I knew from law school complained about her actions being listed in the response to the complaint. The firm owner told them he was sorry how things had gone, but that I hadn’t “known what I was doing” and that I “didn’t understand the law.” However, I didn’t work there anymore and it would just be best to settle and get out of it, the implication being that I didn’t work there anymore because of how I had handled this case.

What a fucking coward. Rather than stand up to this attorney who should have her license suspended for putting the client in bankruptcy in the first place and to appease her wounded pride, he puts me on the chopping block and blames me, implying that I had somehow involved the other lawyer, instead of standing up for my decision to answer the complaint truthfully and openly fighting for the client. He got the result he wanted, which was settlement, but he did so by placing my character, integrity, and morality in question to do so. In his mind, the end justifies any means. Again, what a coward.

I have long said the human characteristic that I most despise is arrogance. I have to amend that and add cowardice. I have always thought of cowardice in terms of things like someone not going bungee jumping or something, but that’s not it. That’s just good old-fashioned healthy fear. Cowardice is not standing up and doing the right thing in spite of what others will think. It’s standing back and letting things happen to save your own ass. It’s being so afraid of what might happen you don’t make something right. It’s making someone else who can’t defend themselves look bad to protect yourself. All of it. I know there is more. I know there are exceptions. But in general, it’s just fucking what it is: cowardice. And Fred is a coward.

I was so upset when I heard about this. I sobbed. I know I have integrity. I know I handled that case properly. I know the other lawyer did not do a good job. And it seemed like it all just didn’t matter. Since this happened, I have spoken to a few trusted attorney friends. They told me not to worry, that my integrity and honesty are intact even though a dishonest and cowardly person used me to protect his own ass from having to deal with conflict. It is the perspective of my friends that in the end a person who is moral will prevail. I hope this is true. The whole thing still bugs the shit out of me. I know the next time I run into Fred I will let him know that I am aware of this situation. I will watch him try to talk his way out of it as I have a thousand other times with other people. But I know better.

by

Derek

So today handed me my first how well can you deal with this new mentality of living in the moment when the moment is shit event.  I knew all along that the real test whether I got it with the living here and now and watching the thoughts but not acting on them would be when something really shitty happened.  So now something shitty has happened and my brain would really like to revert back to its old tricks of getting depressed and worried that life will be fucked up forever.  So I pick up my dog and nuzzle the fur in the back of his neck with my lips and feel its warmth and realize I’m here and right now, this moment I’m okay.  So maybe it will work if I don’t worry how long I have to keep doing it, knowing I’m just staving off the thoughts for now.  I don’t know, it isn’t tested.  But I don’t know what is going to happen the other way either, it just feels worse.

My brother, my baby brother who isn’t a baby anymore, but young enough I remember holding him and carrying him as an infant, I remember my mom’s entire pregnancy, started getting in trouble with drugs when he was a teenager.  He would get in trouble then my dad would pay to fix it and he’d be fine for a while then go back to my parent’s house then get in trouble again then dad would pay to fix it and he’d be fine for a while then he’d get in trouble again and on and on and on ad nauseum.  He’s been to treatment about five times.  He never really gets into it.  It started to be obvious that the key to Derek getting into trouble was going back to my parent’s house.  He’d get in a fight with my dad who likes keeping Derek the bad guy because that’s the only role he’s comfortable with.  Then Derek would use that as an excuse to go find his local idiot druggie friends and go do something stupid and he would get in trouble.

He was so smart as a little boy.  He built a robot from scratch when he was like four years old.  It walked and had blinking eyes.  He made a little motor and hooked it up to the legos and made it move.  But he had Tourette’s and the teachers were annoyed by him and he hated school.  I think he was genuinely ADHD too, but this was before that was the popular label for any kid who didn’t fit.  Luckily the Tourette’s faded by high school.

Anyway, Derek was the kid all the other kids worshiped.  They followed him around like he was the Pied Piper or something.  He is the sensitive sort, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it.  He loves animals like they are babies.  And loves babies.  But he acted tough around all his friends.  They thought he was God.  And he had one special friend, one who looked up to him, a friend he adored.  They were best buddies.  They worked on the farm of this man who was a teacher in Derek’s school, Mr. K.  Mr. K was a kind man and good for Derek because he made him act responsibly.  By the time Derek was 17, he was a foreman in the summer working on Mr. K’s farm.  But Derek had started smoking pot and would get into trouble.  Mr. K would try to guide Derek and get him to make better decisions, but Mr. K was too late on the scene.  Since Derek came along ten years after the rest of us he was handed anything and everything he ever wanted. This meant that when Derek wrecked a car, he got another one.  When he wrecked that one, he got yet another one (I wasn’t even allowed to use my parent’s cars, let alone get my own).  Anyway, so this is how it was.  Derek dropped out of school and passed the GED.  He worked on Mr. K’s farm.  And him and his best buddy Brad were the kings of the dipshits who followed them around like they were gods.

Then one morning Derek spent the night at his girlfriend’s house.  The clock radio woke him up and he was lying there listening.  The DJ told the story of a boy who had been four-wheeling outside town on one of the logging roads.  The logging company had put up a cable across the road up the hill to keep four-wheelers out of there, but neglected to put ribbons on the cables.  A local boy had been riding up the hill and was killed the day before by one of these cables.  Then they said his name and it was Brad, Derek’s best friend in the world.  This news destroyed Derek.  He was never the same after that.  It was like a sadness settled in and became a part of who he was.

Derek told me a story.  He went to the funeral home.  They were not having an open casket.  Brad’s head had been nearly removed by the cable.  The funeral director let Derek go in to be with his body after the funeral.  He told Derek he could open the end with Brad’s feet if he wanted to.  Derek did, but he opened the wrong end of the casket.  He said Brad’s eyes were open and he was crudely stitched together.  He said the image is a part of his brain.  I can’t even imagine.

So after this, Derek kept going to work, but he was darker.  He wasn’t the happy kid anymore.  He got arrested for a DUI and had meth in his truck.  Plead guilty, got his probabtion.  Then about 10 months later, Mr. K was going through the drive thru at McDonald’s and had a heart attack, his car hit a tree, and he died.  They didn’t know if the heart attack or tree killed him.  Derek seemed to quit caring after that.  He quit going to work and started always using drugs.  Of course, my parents would not admit he was using.  He would sleep for days then turn mean then leave.  On and on and on and on.  Then he’d get caught.  Then he’d get ordered treatment.  Then he’d be fine.  Then back on.  In between he married a woman he met online and had a couple of kids.  This came with its usual drama.  Somewhere in there Derek went to jail for the first time.  Then again.

The last couple of years Derek has really seemed to want to stay off drugs.  He took himself to Central City Concern, a treatment program here in Portland, and was doing well, got a job, then went back to my parent’s (there is a whole dynamic there too where my dad asks Derek to “come work for him” that helps keep this going on), then he used drugs again.

Finally, after the last episode, his PO told him he couldn’t go to Marion County.  That was the only place Derek had ever gotten into trouble, and that’s where my parent’s house is.  I allowed Derek to move into my basement until he found his own place, something he planned to do this weekend.  He got a job.  He did not go anywhere near my parent’s house.  The DA wanted to throw him in prison for six months.  The judge gave him probation with a zero tolerance order.  This meant he could not touch any intoxicant.  He could not go where intoxicants were served.  He had to stay in treatment.  He had to keep a job.  Derek was doing all of these things.  He was doing remarkably well.  He would help me with my house and play Clue with my daughter.  His girlfriend annoyed me, but not in any major dysfunctional way, she just isn’t very bright and gets on my nerves sometimes.  He worked graveyard and would come home in the middle of the night and sleep until he had to go to work again.

Then this morning, I woke up and was in the kitchen making tea and noticed the light blinking on my house phone indicating a message.  I did not have my glasses on or contacts in so I could not see the caller id to find out who had left the message, so I just dialed in.  It was a recorded message trying to get me to choose whether or not to accept a collect call.  I felt the flutter in my stomach.  I got my glasses and looked at my phone.  It said Inmate Phone.  I went to the front window and looked out.  Both Derek’s cars were parked there.  I walked down to the basement.  Derek was not in bed.  I called my Dad.  What is going on?  Oh, I just got up.  Not much.  No. What is going on with Derek?  Nothing I know of.  Well there is a call on my phone that says Inmate Phone.  Shit.  No.  My dad told me to call Sarah, so I did.

Man, she’s dumb.  That is the thing about her that annoys me more than anything is how damn dumb she is.  I’m trying to practice compassion, to accept each person as they are.  To love everyone, even if I don’t want to.  She is my biggest practice case.  I just can’t stand it because I don’t think she’s really that stupid, I think she is just used to people doing everything for her when she acts like she can’t do anything, and I don’t think she’s as dumb as she pretends to be.  So when she acts like she’s stupid, it drives me crazy.  And it’s not fair to her.  She can’t help it if she’s been treated like a baby her whole life so she doesn’t do much herself.  And I wouldn’t dislike a dog because it was dumb.  Hell, my dog Edna is dumber than a fence post, but I love her to death.  So anyway, this morning Sarah was as blase’ as ever, Oh Derek got arrested.  Why?  Drinking.  Why was he drinking?  Well we went to Gabe’s after he got off work and he had a beer.  Well the police wouldn’t just come up and arrest Derek for drinking a beer.  They would need some reason to know he had drank a beer.  It wouldn’t just come out of nowhere.  Oh well I was driving us home and I got a ticket and they smelled the beer and arrested him.  Fuck.

So I called my parents back and told them and the rest I guess will be whatever it is.  I don’t even know.  I’m trying not to be angry with Sarah for driving like she’s blind because she does and it’s annoying.  Hell, she totaled her car the day before while driving alone in the middle of the night.  More than likely she was sending Derek a text message.  I’ve seen her text while driving on too many occasions.  I won’t let her hold her phone when she’s driving with me in the car.  But the truth is it doesn’t damn matter how Sarah was driving because if Derek hadn’t been drinking, he wouldn’t have gotten arrested.  I told my dad this.  He wanted to be irritated at Sarah for how she drives and irritated at Gabe for drinking.  I told him none of their actions would have mattered if Derek hadn’t been drinking.  My parents would love for all this to be someone else’s fault, like laying blame will alleviate any of the pain.  It won’t.

I’m trying not to wonder how Derek could be so hopeless to get himself in this mess.  I keep reminding myself that he knew his limits, but he really has this “It won’t happen to me” mentality.  I know that in the journey that is Derek’s life there are many, many choices he could have made differently that would likely have resulted in something else.  I have known for a very long time that I cannot control this and that he is ultimately responsible for what happens to him.  And at the same time it breaks my heart.  I’m so sad that this is his path.  I wish he would choose something different.  It hurts to watch someone you love make choices that hurt them.

Two days ago Derek was sleeping.  I went down and gave him a big hug.  He asked me if everything was okay.  I said everything was fine, I just love him.  I’m so glad I did that.

by

Evil Guerrilla Virus

These can be addicting.  I sit here and have these random thoughts and want to write them here instead of my journal.  I carry around this notebook to write my strange random thoughts and to draw pictures.  Sometimes I’ll have a dream and write it in there thinking it’s profound and I should make a movie out of it.  Then I’ll go back and read the dream later and realize it WAS profound…profoundly dumb. Now I’m experimenting with background color.  Yes.  My time is well spent.  Well spent indeed.  (:I had a cold in early November.  A nasty wicked cold that kicked my ass and left me in bed for days.  It lasted about 3 1/2 weeks.  It started with a wretched, mind-blowing headache that just hurt no matter how much caffeine or ibuprofen I poured on it.  Then there were two days of sore throat that hurt so badly I could not speak and swallowing was pure hell and torture.  After that cleared, I suddenly had snot gushing from every available orifice in my head.  That started to clear and I began to feel the rumblings low in my lungs of a cough that rattled every joint in my body.  I attempted to stave off the cough, but to no avail.  I would lie there, feeling it humming in my chest.  I would breathe slowly. In. Out. In. Out.  Please god, don’t make me cough.  Then it would happen and it would hurt and it would not stop.  This went on for days.  I had to pile pillows high on my bed to prop myself up so I could sleep because anytime I was horizontal the cough would creep up and kick my ass.  I would be in that lovely place right before sleep, drowsily imagining flying or that I had three arms, when that cough would smash me right back into reality.  I remember lying there with my eyes dry feeling like I would never sleep again.  I finally succumbed and took four of Milla’s triaminic cough strips.  I don’t like taking those kinds of drugs because they drug me so completely I have a hangover for days, but even a hangover was preferable to that shit.  Only it was like the cough sat and waited for the exact SECOND the dextromethorphan wore off.  I love saying that word, dextromethorphan.  I would lie there and say it over and over to take myself into that sleepy place knowing the cough couldn’t get me.  ANYWAY.  The SECOND it wore off, the cough would return with a vengeance worse than anything prior to the attempted cough murder.  I finally started popping the dextromethorphan like some kind of an addict just to sleep.  After about a week of this, my head hurt constantly and I was a walking zombie from lack of non-drug-induced sleep.  That’s about when the tickle began.  I didn’t have any mucous left.  There was just that fucking tickle in the back of my throat.  I’d be sitting there on the computer or reading a book or trying to work and feel that wretched ass tickle.  Tickle.  Tickle.  And have to cough.  And then I could not stop coughing.  I even stuck my finger in the back of my throat in an attempt to stop the tickle.  It didn’t work.  I looked up the tickle on the internet and found many a distressed sufferer lamenting on various medical websites about the wretched ass tickle.  Some had suffered for years.  These were people with chronic conditions, asthma and the like.  Thank GOD I did not have that. I had the tickle for about four days.  I probably would have found a huge bridge from which to fling myself had the tickle continued much longer.  I pity those people who live their lives with the tickle.

ANYWAY.  What was my point? I had one.  The POINT is that I had this bitch of a cold that lasted nearly four weeks, then I began gradually to heal.  There was a period of about five days where I sneezed, but had no other symptoms, but that faded as well.  Even Milla’s aftercare teacher would say, You are doing better. Then the next day he would say, You seem 10 percent better today.  Finally one day he said, I think you are 98 percent better.  Does that mean the cold is all gone and you are well?  I would say, Yes!  I am so much better.  Thank you so much for thinking of me.

Well.  We were both wrong.  I woke up yesterday and the damn headache, lung ache, face snot, sneezing, sore throat, and cough are all back and all at once.  No more of that systematic one at a time shit for this cold.  No.  It’s all back and it’s all back at once.  And you know what is really strange?  My friend Britta had this same crap about the same time I did and in the same order.  And yesterday her shit came back exactly like mine!!  It’s like some miracle virus that tricks you into thinking you are well when you’re not!  It’s so cruel.

So this is what I’m contemplating as I sit here not doing much work because my head hurts and I’m tired and my lungs hurt and I’m WHINING.  Wah wah wah!  I guess I will see now if the pretty orange color stays when I actually post this thing.

DAMN!!  I just typed in Evil Guerrilla Virus and in the process sneezed the biggest grossest sneeze of ick I’ve sneezed in years!  Thank god for tissue and thank god more for soft tissue with lotion in it!  Yikes!