December 29, 1998.

Oh my god, do I ever feel rotten. I am among the 3/4's of my family to be mercilessly shot down with a post-Xmas cold from Hell. I blame my mother...she prolly picked it up from all the old people she takes care of. Well, not blame in the sense that I'm mad. I actually feel kind of bad about my mom's job - she's a nurse on a geriatrics ward in a major metro hospital. So she sees a lot of people die. Plus, every Xmas a bunch of people drop off their old ones in the hospital for the season, making up stories about recurring coughs and such.

Ho ho ho.

So it's kind of a depressing time to be a nurse on 4 South. I've got it good...all I deal with are depressed peers and smartypants professors, neither of which have the tendency to die on a regular basis.

But I still have a cold. My back hurts and my nose is running and my throat's all scratchy in a very perverse way that doesn't make me sound like Marlene Dietrich at all. Not one bit.

My head ached so much on waking this morning that I considered calling out for toast & tea and tylenol...but I knew that nobody would answer and I'd just make the pounding worse. I think this is why the cold pill business is so lucrative: not enough of us have sweeties to coddle us when we're sick. Being fussed over is a squillion times more preferable than taking a pill and getting on with your day. Although I did end up taking an expired Contact C capsule that made me drowsy for an hour & seems to have lost effect. I wonder if I can drink tonight. I hope so.

Speaking of dying, there was rather good news in my household today. A couple days before Xmas, my dad started having chest pains. At the hospital, they told him he'd had a little heart attack, and scheduled a stress test. But somebody dropped the ball, and the stress test wasn't done until this moment, revealing...

Nothing.

It wasn't even a heart attack. Prolly some dietary-induced problem like an ulcer or whatever. There was a very real pall of death hanging over our house during the holidays, and I'm very glad to see it dispersed. I no longer have to worry about stressing out my parents. My mom doesn't have to freak out and go off to cry if my Dad does infrequent spots of heavy lifting (All of our decorations and Xmas props are stored in the garage loft, so my mom decorated the coatrack this year. Very strange, but very typically us.)

I haven't mentioned it because there didn't seem to be much point until I knew anything. Little waves of impotence and fear and frustration have been breaking over me constantly for the last week or so, and I've been getting into a lot of little fights with the Boy, fights which quickly become loud due to the crucial facts that

1. we're both very sensitive & get our feelings hurt a lot, and
2. we're both drama queens.

This turns a simple argument over the NHL into a door-slamming high-speed-car-chase tears-fest in the blink of an eye. We're both too proud to end it before it gets to that point, too. What children, hmm?

But we always kiss and make up. And I can state with authority that sometimes the fight is worth the relief-unfurling-in-my-chest feeling of reconciliation. Sometimes.

Coda: Just took a walk to the supermarket to get Scott's present before the place closes. I figure, what better present is there for the boyfriend of a vegetarian than meat? Raw, oozing steak. Yum.

The combination of fresh air & a new Diet Coke have energized me more than I would have thought possible. I feel a squillion times better. But I have miles to go and all that, so I'll end this here. Tomorrow: puppies, movies, and a party review! Exciting.