Musings of the Sick and Tired

I would like to say for the record that I am sick and tired of being sick. One of the various reasons why California edged out Glasgow in decisions of where to live was that I seemed to get sick more often in Glasgow. But here I am in "sunny" California, recovering from my fifth? sixth? flu/cold/illness this winter.

This last one was a real doozie. The first two days I could hardly keep anything down besides slow careful sips of water. I finally worked up to Jello and widely spaced crackers and then finally toast. I'm back on real food now (day 5) but everything is still a bit wonky and odd. Food is a really strange thing. I actually felt better--clearer headed and able to walk around and do things--during day 2, living on Jello and fizzy water having had nothing substantial in around 48hrs than I typically do in a sugar crash when I go a few too many hours without food. I mean, I didn't feel great...kind of faded, washed out (plus, you know, a pounding migraine that was possibly part of the illness but more probably caffein withdrawl). But I was able to walk around calmly and hold reasonably intelligent conversations. It was actually something akin to, though not as pleasant as, that odd walking on air sensation I get on the far side of an all nighter when you've left "sleepy" and even "exhausted" far behind hours ago and managed to convince your body not to sleep dispite the fact that's what it craves. And at some point it stops asking for sleep for a while and there is this surreal period where everything is a little slow and very light and jokes are funnier. I remember wondering once, long before I'd had alcohol but was already in the habit of pulling all-nighters for writing papers, if that was what being drunk was like. It's not, but it's interesting that it came to mind.

Come to think of it, it's usually food that breaks the spell. I'd be "walking on air" all morning and then I'd have lunch and come crashing down.

The other interesting thing, going back to my food-deprived days, was how wonderful that first piece of toast tasted after a day of Jello and flavored fizzy water. Actually, before the toast was a cup of chicken broth since I was craving non-sweet and yet chicken broth is still darn close to "clear liquid". I stuck a few herbs in the broth (and got a very funny look when someone looked up and saw me sprinkling basil into a coffee mug!) and drank it down, savoring every warm savery sip. But that was nothing compared to the first slice of toast with just the thinest veneer of butter. That first bite...it was indescribably. It was like tasting the essense of toast. In Platonic terms, the perfect idea of toast that lies behind every earthly example of toast. And yet one of the best things about it was how down to earth, how tacktile it was. The slight crunch, the resistance of biting down. Wonderful.

I'm not quite back to taking food for granted, so I thought this might be the moment to record my illness-induced thoughts.

Anyway, in addition to wacky fun with a string of more-or-less-minor illnesses, I'm also taking an academic class for the first time since grad-school. It's also my first largely online class, something I'm still figuring out (it's easier to go to class in person, in my opinion). It's been tricky keeping up with the coursework amidst colds and stomach flus, but the class is genuinely interesting and hopefully useful (if I get back to my prefered line of work one of these days). It's about teaching writing to ESL students, which I hope will add to my bag of tricks teaching writing classes in general, since I inevitably have a few ESL students. Maybe I'd even be up to teaching a whole ESL writing class.