the danish outpost
updated when time and inspiration allow. latest and greatest always in the blog.
half a brain, if i'm lucky.

02.10.2001

feeling kinda how a girl feels

i tried to call in sick today. really, i did. i called in sick, and tried to go back to sleep. for starters, it's hard to sleep when you can't breathe.

but boss man sounded upset, tho, and i was edgy, so i went in around 1ish. he wasn't upset at me, personally; i didn't take it that way. it still nibbled away at the edges of my consciousness.

he was mildly shocked to see me when i walked in. i explained why i was there, and he said i misread him. he would rather i had stayed home and gotten better. i don't really think that was true. natural sarcasm combined with concerns about resources on a tight project = anxiety. and that came out on the phone. it's reasonable; i'm edgy about the project too. of course, when i'm standing in front of him, looking like death warmed over and reaching for a chair so i don't tip over, the anxiety switches over to concern. ;)

not that i was able to do much good being there, what with the cold meds leaving me feeling like i'd been punched in the gut. doesn't leave me with much focus. i could get as far as knowing that there was a Problem to be addressed. and that was the end of the road for me.

that, plus coughing and sneezing... my coworkers were none too thrilled to see me, i think.

at least i was able to address some basic day to day issues, keeping the queues down to a minimum, getting patches out to customers, routing problems around to (hopefully) the right people.

and i remembered to bring a can of plain old chicken noodle soup with lots of noodles. oh, my lord... the healing properties of chicken noodle soup cannot be too highly rated. heated up a big bowl of it, staggered back to my desk, and was grateful for the familiar aroma and taste of good ol' CNS.

but, as much as it helped, i was still not firing on all pistons. the more complicated questions (anything more complex than 'how are you?') left me baffled. if i'd had the energy, i would have been frustrated. i mean, these were, on a regular day, basic queries, things that i have been dealing with again and again for a long time. most times, habit kicks in and the answer is there, or within easy reach. today, it felt like reaching across the Grand Canyon for reference materials. and my arms just aren't that long.

i sort of felt like Dana. she was a friend of mine in college, and i bumped into her one day on the Green. she was with a few friends, and they had all done acid. she was thrilled beyond belief that she had found the Meaning of Life. of course, she couldn't articulate it just then, but she assured me she had written it down for later. turns out, her notes were meaningless squiggles. she was depressed for days after that, as anyone who had found and lost the Meaning of Life very well might be.

everything seemed wonderfully convoluted today, as if i'd discovered a new paradigm for philosophy. in reality? things were as involved as a bowl of cornflakes, probably.

never let anyone tell you that cold medicines aren't right up there with the fanciest of designer drugs. the shit that stuff does to your brain is amazing.

one of the other reasons i went in today, besides general concern for the project and a bit of guilt from the boss, was the fact that i wasn't sleeping well enough to escape all the bad dreams. this waking up and falling back to sleep every 20 or 40 minutes is not exactly conducive to restful sleep.

so instead, i kept having trauma dreams. there were a few about nuclear devastation, a la the Neville Schute dream from the other night. there were a couple about conflict, both in the verbal sense as well as flashbacks to the assault. once again, that particular bugaboo reared its ugly head.

i can't really figure out where all of this is coming from. well, that's not true. there's no one thing that's happened that i'm dreaming about. it's more a pastiche of a lot of recent things. friends under stress, work deadlines, and the terrorist attacks. i suppose it's my small version of post-traumatic stress disorder.

that, on top of insomnia, makes it even harder to get a good night's sleep. and that's exactly what my body needs right now - a good long stretch of dead to the world, like a log, don't even twitch all night, full immersion sleep. about 57 hours of it, i think.

*sigh* i'm hoping that wearing myself out a bit by going in to work will finally shut my brain up long enough to get at least a few hours. because the thought of this infectious crud dragging on for weeks is really unpleasant.

yesterday :: tomorrow

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