Lame
Well, today sucked.
Long story short, I was supposed to meet my former asshole landlord at 7:30 this morning outside my old building to get my overdue security deposit back from him. He didn’t show up until 8:15, even though I called him twice while I was waiting. So he left me alternately sitting outside shivering in the cold and standing around in the small lobby of the building, for 45 minutes. With a sinus infection no less.
I really don’t want to dwell on it, but he finally showed up, I got the check, and I never have to see him or deal with him again. Good riddance.
Unfortunately I didn’t fall asleep last night until 3:30, and I found myself awake at 6:30 — even though I’d set my alarm at 7:15. So I got three hours of sleep.
I’m not a good weekend napper, so when I get very little sleep like that, I wind up stumbling around my apartment all day, exhausted, yet unable to fall asleep no matter how much I try. I can be lying there on the bed with my eyes closed, wiped out, but if it’s daylight I just can’t fall asleep. So it’s been like that all day.
And despite the decongestant and the antibiotic and the nasal spray for the past three days, my ear feels the same. There’s still this weird little fluid-like mass that closes my right ear passage when I press against that ear. And standing outside shivering in the cold for 45 minutes and getting three hours of sleep seems to have got the left side of my head a little congested now.
And of course I’m Mr. Hypochondriac, so I’m convinced I either have a brain tumor or pneumonia or I need sinus surgery or I have an irreversible ear infection or something.
Anyway, looks like I’ll be going for a sinus X-ray next week or the week after, assuming nothing changes in the next few days.
This is my second Saturday night in a row that I’m staying at home. I feel so lame. I mean, I kind of don’t mind it, but I do feel kind of uncool. It’s VMSS (Vestigial Middle School Syndrome). If I’m not out carousing on a Saturday night, I feel like I’m wasting it. Fifty-two Saturday nights per year… maybe ten more years before I get too old to go to New York bars… that’s 520 Saturdays — okay, never mind. There are plenty of ’em left after all.
And anyway, by the time I get too old for the bars I’ll probably be over them anyway (I’m nearly over them as it is), and I can do real things.
So I’ll stay in and play around online and see who’s around to chat with and make myself a scrambled-egg sandwich and watch Saturday Night Live and read The Power Broker and the article about sleep from The New Yorker a few weeks ago (how appropriate) and maybe start tomorrow’s Sunday New York Times crossword.
I’m getting better and better at the New York Times crossword, actually. I did a huge chunk of yesterday’s and today’s puzzles, the hardest puzzles of the week.
At least I’m getting something out of all this.
You know, weekends seem to be getting shorter and shorter.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
Dear Jeff,
Hmm…if you’re having trouble with your sleeping cycle, you might want to try getting some over the counter melatonin. (When I first came to college, not only could I not fall asleep until 5 in the morning, I woke up at around 7… o_O…but taking some melatonin helped a lot.)
~Kameko
I’ve only had one ear infection in my life, so far.
How you describe it fits exactly to my own description. I, too, was extremely frustrated (extremely) and anxious. I probably drove my doctor nuts.
Despite my notions of instantaneous healing, it took well over a week for the fluid build-up to disperse, and for me to stop hearing myself so clearly when i spoke (or breathed). At one point my doc even offerred to puncture my ear drumb, which would have eliminated to the inner-head reverb, but would have prolonged the healing time considerably — and hurt like having a knee cap pulled off.
I always take TherFlu’s Lemon flavoured (powder form) sleep/decongestant. I sleep for a good 5 hours mid-day on that stuff. And lotsa microwaved chicken broth for the fun of it.
.rob