Say it with me: T-G-I-F-F!

Last week, I gave Sweetie McPie the lovely and extremely personal gift of his very own virulent pneumonia. He accepted it graciously, but thoughtfully refrained from passing it along to the children.

Nonetheless, it's now been a few weeks that we've been limping along domestically, trying to keep things in order with one parent or the other in bed, and neither of us sleeping at night. (The coughing! Oh, the coughing...)

So, we are very much looking forward to a non-sick, non-kid, non-traveling, non-hosting weekend, starting in about six please-let-them-be-short hours. We're all stocked up with a cupboard full of chili fixin's, and a stack of borrowed Buffy DVDs.

At long last, we'll soon be back to our old superhero selves. Just in time for Christmas.

New Moan Ya

I managed to get into work today, driven by the stress that things may be getting out of hand there, and enabled by a codeine-fuelled good night's sleep. That's where my doctor reached me when she called to report that I do in fact have pneumonia. In my lower left lobe. (Who knew lungs had lobes?)

Now I am fully armed with the drugs I need to survive another round.

But I probably won't be able to manage my last ulti game of the season on Thursday. I. Am. So. Weak.

[wink]

Blech. Sick.

Thank you for your get-wells. Please, keep 'em coming - I need all the help I can get.

I am still sick-a-bed.

Friday and Saturday I thought I was a little better - enough so that we didn't cancel the wine club meeting we were hosting on Saturday night. McPie pulled more than his weight, doing most of the cooking for the event, so I could take rests and save my strength.

What is this, a Victorian novel?

Bah. Anyway, I did take it easy at the wine club (Wine of Italy in Eight Easy Lessons - subject for another post, one day when I am well.) But by Sunday afternoon, the fever and coughing was back with a vengeance and I was in tears of discomfort and exhaustion this morning.

(McPie and I haven't slept in a week -- I can't lay down for the coughing. It's worse when I do, and makes the coughing more awkward physically. For McPie, it's simply the noise, and he hasn't been able to bring himself to abandon me for the spare room, and his sanity, yet.)

So, I went to the doctor today. A stroke of luck: I called my own clinic this morning and was able to get an appointment with my very own doc first thing in the morning. She prescribed some very hardcore cough suppressant (ie: with codeine), and chest x-rays to see if it's pneumonia. My lungs weren't rattling, so she couldn't make that guess just from the examination.

So, I spent the afternoon in a codeine-induced haze. Another stroke of luck - the codeine hasn't caused any adverse reactions (yet). When I had my wisdom teeth out, the Tylenol 3's made me completely nauseous and hallucinatory. (But then, I wasn't able to really take them on a full stomach. :-) ) It really does help the cough, as opposed to the regular cough medicines I'd tried that were of no use at all. But it wear off after about three hours, and doesn't help with the fever.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to go to work; the coughing is debilitating, and the codeine haze is too! (And I'm taking the lowest dose.) Oh, and the fever is none too comfortable either.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I find out really soon that I do have pneumonia, so I can get myself fixed. If it's not pneumonia, and they don't give me antibiotics (or something, anything!) and I just have to get over this on my own ("get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids"), I just won't know what to do.

An unwelcome visit

I was already begrudgingly hosting the ornery Coughy McHacksalot when, well after midnight, Chilly O'Feverish showed up on the doorstep with a suitcase brimming with Aches&Pain®. The two unwelcome guests partied the night away in my bed (the miserable vagrants). I could only shiver helplessly as I clung, desperate for warmth, to McPie's strangely cool body, praying for oblivion...

McPie whupped O'Feverish with a solid round of Advil, and the devil was gone by morning. McHacksalot and I are still in bed this afternoon, sleeping off the hangover from the Aches&Pain®.

Having spent a weekend two months ago with their terrible sister Snotty McSinus, the bragging rights I'd won from years of avoiding the company of the Terrible Trio are officially void.

Speaking of icing on the cake

We finally got our wedding rings.

A lovely and talented goldsmith, Csilla Ekes, made them for us. I would recommend her for any custom goldsmith. Like I said: lovely and talented. They are not really as scratchy looking as this picture shows. In real life:
You may notice that I am wearing mine on my right hand. For our wedding, we used rings we had previously given each other. After wearing my snakes on my left hand, I decided that I preferred them there, representing my "public" wedding ring. So I had this one sized for my right hand. Because McPie's original concrete ring could not be resized, he happily returned it to his right hand, and the hammered white gold one is in the place of honour.

All Grown Up, v. 3.0

We bought a furnace on Wednesday. Well, the system's not really set up so that the word "buy" is appropriate. We signed up for one, and paid the deposit. Our new one will be installed within two weeks.

Our current furnace didn't break or anything. But it was kind of old, kind of loud, not really efficient. The new one is officially "high efficiency" with some sort of two-stage system that I don't really understand but is apparently more comfortable and quieter. So, fun!

Also, there's icing on this cake! First, we're getting the ducts cleaned. (A month ago, I didn't even know there was such a thing.) AND, even better, we've got appointments made next week to get estimates for new windows. Windows! Cuz really, there's no point in getting a new furnace when you can feel the breeze coming in from any glassed area of the house. That's just silly.

I thought buying a couch was all grown-up and mature. The fact that I'm actually excited (like, with butterflies and everything!) about the prospect of buying a new furnace and having new windows installed indicates to me that I've reached a new height of adulthood.

I'm optimistic today.

I find published lists ("best of", "top 100", etc) to be interesting and pointless. They are generally too bounded by subjectivity to be useful, but they are still interesting as a snapshot of generally-held social opinion.

This list of the Top 100 living geniuses has a neat twist - although it's a top 100, the listees are ranked by a rating system, so there are many "ties". What I find of particular interest is the fields represented by any given rank. For example, look at all the people tied for #43:

boxer
islamicist
businessman
writer
inventor
scientist

Or #58, which includes:

singer
computer scientist
anthropologist
historian
photographer
writer
poet

In the real world, I often get the sense that artistic or cultural objectives play second fiddle in many ways to achievements in the world of business or science. In this one snapshot, however, we see that in this particular swath of "hearts and minds", art, culture, science, business and social studies seem to stand shoulder to shoulder. Each supporting the other, I'd think, and providing a diverse and interesting world of perspective and progress.