Sick and Tired and Brains and Hail

I’ve been fighting a mild cold all week. It’s not bad enough to keep me in bed all day, but I feel like I’m operating on about 50% of my usual steampower. I bet you didn’t know I run on steam, did you? That’s why my ass is so big, to make room for the boiler.

I haven’t really been able to stay home from work to recover, because this week has been one of the busiest I can remember, and next week will be about the same. So will this weekend; I have to go in to the office tomorrow.

I’m going to need for you to go ahead and come in on Saturday, mmkay? Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too. 

I went to work late two days this week (sanctioned by my very cool boss, of course) so I could try to get a little extra sleep in the morning, since I’ve also been having trouble staying asleep all night. I’m physically tired from the cold and the insomnia, and mentally tired from a long week at work.

Do you ever get that feeling where it seems like your brain is simply full? It’s a weird physical discomfort as well as a mental one, like you’ve short circuited. It’s hard to think, and impossible to find motivation to care about what you’re supposed to be caring about. The brain has shut and locked all its windows and put up a sign on the medulla oblongata stating, “No solicitors. This means you.” Anything you try to force into it bounces right off.

At that point, the only things to be done are: a little solitaire or sudoku, or a walk across the street to JD’s for a sugar cookie and cherry limeade, or an insane laughfest over the cubes (it helps when it’s 4 p.m. on a Friday and everyone’s feeling the same as you), or Karen’s entertainment news report. Basically, something that doesn’t require any actual brain processing power.

This evening, a big storm rolled through. I got home from work, complete with hard-boiled brain, and laid down on the bed trying to figure out if I had the energy to go out to dinner with Leslie for her birthday (unfortunately I didn’t… I simply wouldn’t be able to be “on” and social in any capacity this evening). A few minutes later, the tornado siren in our neighborhood started blaring. We turned on the TV weather station and decided to prepare the closet under the stairs for shelter. Doc rounded up the fuzzy kids, I got the cat carriers out of the garage, and we filled up a couple of water jugs. We put everything plus my cell phone and the laptop in the stairs closet. The tornadoes dissipated before they reached our area, but we did get quarter sized hail for a while, and then some nice hard rain.