Things to Feel Good About in a Downer Week

Starting on Sunday I got knocked on my ass by a wicked chest cold. Usually my illness follows the same pattern: scratchy throat, post nasal drip (yuck, sorry), then after a night of (not great) sleep I wake up and BOOM! I'm congested and drippy and gross. After a few days of marveling at my body's infinite capacity for producing mucus (again, yuck, sorry), I feel the cold move its way into my lungs. I end up with a hacking cough and daily asthma attacks until I can get enough rest and vitamin C for the cold to make its way back out of my breathing tubes.

Weirdly, this time I got almost none of the head congestion; just a feeling of being tired, headachy and scratchy-throated on Sunday, which I perhaps wrongly attributed to dehydration caused by excessive drinking and snacking (see my last post). And then on Monday I woke up with a killer headache and a cough that got worse and worse as the day progressed. Suffice it to say that on Tuesday I called in sick and didn't even work from home - a first for me in this job. On Wednesday, although I felt less tired, my asthma and coughing were so bad that I had to work from home AND use my nebulizer (the asthmatic's secret weapon, an intense vapor delivery of albuterol for twenty frigging minutes per dose, which leaves me with a racing heart, numb hands, and a cold, achy body) twice.

So, you ask, where are the things to feel good about?  I'm getting to them. I know. I'm long-winded. Here goes:

A is for Alcohol

In the throes of serious heartburn, I have decided to issue a moratorium on alcohol consumption for the workweek ahead. This moratorium is, of course, only applicable to me. I have to say that I feel some slight sense of admiration for those people stoic or stubborn enough to withstand daily drinking for longer than the span of a holiday weekend. Clearly I am not one of those people.

Living in Austin, being as yet still in my twenties, and enjoying close proximity to downtown, I felt more than usual in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day this year. I didn't go out to bars - it was, after all, a Thursday, and just seeing the crowds of green-clad tourists clustered around 6th street made me hurry home after work - but I bought some Guinness, as well as a small bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, for a cupcake recipe. Of course, the cupcakes only required a half cup of the stout, so I was able to freely enjoy the rest of it in unadulterated form. And I did.

Just as I enjoyed the Dos Equis and scotch-and-Diet Coke at Maggie Mae's during the free Aussie BBQ showcase, the cocktails at the Driskill, the additional beers at the Swan Dive, the Spring Folly variety pack of New Belgium ales that I bought when my cousin arrived in town, the Budweiser 55 calorie beer she bought, and this past weekend's Abita beer binge thanks to a friend's housewarming party.

Obviously, if it is there, I will drink it.  To my discomfort.

Gonna Make a Pie With a Heart in the Middle

So I am ashamed to say this, and it scares me a little given that I'm about to move back to scorching Texas in a couple of months, but I have become a real heat wimp in the last five years.  Last year the thermostat in Denver didn't even reach 80 degrees until around mid-June, and the hottest days we had all summer got up to 92 or 93 degrees.  Most of the time the temperatures stayed in the low 80s, and I recall complaining when I went swimming outdoors that it was too cold.

And that's why this summer has been a shock to my system.  By June we'd had temperatures reaching almost 100, and this past weekend we actually managed to reach those triple digits in Denver for the first time in a couple of years.  It turns out that even with the dry air in Colorado, a building without air conditioning doesn't quite cut it.  I've been sweltering all month.  So you can imagine my joy this past week when a rainstorm came through and, for an evening, cooled it all down.  I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and bake, since these blueberries in my fridge had been calling my name for a couple of days, saying "Robin! Bake us in a delicious pie!"

So many berries!

Fun With Mom

It's been a good week.

Last Sunday Greg arrived in town, and I went to the office and worked for awhile alongside him.  It was nice to see him, but we didn't get a lot of time to spend together on this visit.  This is because he was pretty busy on the database, and also because my mom was in town.  That was a busy weekend - I was running around all over the place to pick up things like an Aerobed, sheets, closet organizing stuff, etc and then spending a lot of time cleaning in preparation for her visit.

Mom arrived on Tuesday night, and we had dinner at Charlie Brown's and then stayed up late chatting, as is my normal tendency when faced with visitors I haven't seen in awhile.  On Wednesday we got up early and went downtown, where I had breakfast and we sat for a little while until I had to go to work.  That was a difficult workday - I was tired, and I knew I had to leave earlyish, so I had to be efficient.  I met up with Mom at six o'clock and we headed to Cafe Colore, one of my favorite restaurants downtown, for dinner.  I had a wonderful vegetarian angel-hair pasta dish which also featured pesto and goat cheese, and as soon as we were done eating we hurried over to the Pepsi Center for the Carole King/James Taylor concert.

'Cause I wanna be neat and tidy!

Thank god for visitors.

For serious. If it weren't for the threat of social/parental ostracism, there are areas of my apartment that I would never clean. I'd be moving out and suddenly discover nooks and crannies that haven't been disturbed in four years. That's the sad truth.

Today, spurred on by both my mom's impending visit (she arrives Tuesday) and the ever-looming move-out date (most likely October 15), I decided to tackle the most dreaded of all the junk spots in my apartment: the bathroom closet.

Now, despite the fact that I live in a studio, I have ample storage space. Perhaps TOO ample. The bathroom closet is spacious enough to walk in and close the door after you; there are shelves on one side and a built-in pole for hanging towels. I've been storing everything from sheets to towels to medicine to makeup to cleaning supplies in there since I moved in. But since I've been adding and occasionally throwing things out at random, it's become this black hole of stuff. Here's a picture (no, I did not do anything to make this look worse than it was).

If You'll Just Fill This Out In Triplicate

A month or so ago I made a semi-conscious decision to start writing more. Upon reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, I wanted to reflect on my day-to-day state, and to see if keeping a journal would make me any likelier to focus on the positive. I haven't noticed any increase in positive feelings so far, but I have noticed that I'm more aware of expressing negative ones. Oh, I'm no Pollyanna, but I'm starting to choose my words more carefully in some settings, and phrase things the way I'd like to actually feel them.

This is mostly applicable to work, as one might imagine. It's been a challenge - summer is always busy, and with the database conversion and our abrupt loss of a staffperson we're all tense and unable to get everything done. My biggest problem is that, like a senior in her last semester of high school, I'm beginning to lose interest. I know I'm moving on. I know the new systems and projects won't benefit me. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's making me lazy.

Whatta world

It's Sunday - and so far a lovely mixture of lazy and productive. I've just finished my laundry and I'm uploading photos on Shutterfly while I wait for carpet cleaner to dry so I can vacuum. I awoke very disoriented this morning, thinking for some reason that I'd slept very late when in fact it was only about 8:15. I contemplated going back to sleep, since I didn't go to bed until about 2:30 in the morning, but decided it would be much better to read and have my breakfast and coffee in bed. I ate lots of cereal and drank three cups of java while I dove into The Redbreast, a novel by Jo Nesbo that I picked up after Marisa reviewed it on Word Herd Leader. She's become my go-to source for reading material, which is quite handy. I haven't got very far in the story yet, but I'm enjoying the Norwegian McNultyesque Harry Hole and the flashbacks to WWII. It does make me realize, however, just how ignorant I am about history, and I may have to pick up some nonfiction WWII reading after this.