The Best.

Starting school in September blew my life out of the water. I tried to fit in some ‘fun’ whenever I could, but mostly spent my time reading, highlighting, summarizing, studying, writing… or thinking about doing those things. There were several days when I cried about being overwhelmed and the only way I could ground myself was to remember that I had a whole month off from school spanning the middle of December to the middle of January. I daydreamed about library books and writing letters and catching up on emails and blogging and, yes, actually, I did spend some time thinking happily about cleaning out the storage space in the basement, too.

The first week of my vacation is now half-over. It has sucked.

I had imagined it as a week to myself to lounge around and relax. I planned to bake cookies while wearing my jammas. I intended to send the kids off to school, and Coffee off to work, and turn up the music really loud and dance around and basically de-stress from school and prepare myself for 2 weeks with the kids at home. I even requested a good number of books from the library so I could take a long, hot bubble bath and read in the middle of the day.

Today is Wednesday and that imaginary week has not materialized and will not be materializing.

One of Coffee’s coworkers has been unwell for a bit. He passed it on to Coffee who has been pretty close to dead on the sofa for two days. It is rare that my husband gets sick with anything that lasts more than a few hours (no, really) and he’s alternated a fever, nasty cough, sore throat, nausea, chills and an earache. He has little in the way of appetite or energy. He’s popping Benylin and Tylenol and ColdFX and vitamin C tablets.

I do not handle illness well around the holiday season. I become ridiculously anxious and, really, just plain scared. The logical part of me can see that my husband is not going to die, but the emotional side of my brain is hysterical at the moment. This is the season during which all of my loved ones died unexpectedly; I have no reason to believe it won’t happen again.

Now, if CBT has taught me anything, it’s that I have to shut my brain UP. So there’s a lot of “calm down, just breathe, it’s okay…” chatter going on inside my head as I pace around and bug the shit out of my husband with my offers of more water, more drugs, some food..? It’s not helping. I feel like I’m sort of going insane, actually, and he really just needs to rest and sleep and heal.

He’s sleeping on the sofa and I’m sleeping alone and literally crying myself to sleep. I keep picturing myself waking up in the morning and him being dead.

And of course this is all making me miss my Dad in a huge way because every Christmas season brings with it a long list of good memories about him and, at the same time, I tend to focus on his absence when the holidays roll around. So I’m freaking out about Coffee being sick and rehashing every detail of my Dad’s death, right down to that old mental image of his body on the living room floor.

And thinking about that, of course, brings me to my grandparents. Also dead.

And my friend Deb. Also dead.

I haven’t made cookies and I haven’t read any library books (though I finally picked them up today) and I haven’t blasted any music. And on Friday, two days from now, the kids will come home from school and start their own 2 week vacation where they drive each other insane, fight, exclude each other, bully each other and make me want to throw things at them.

The kicker is that I’m not feeling well, physically. Two days ago I started my period after a few months of missing it (this is not abnormal with the PCOS but it does mean that my entire abdomen is screaming) and I’ve had a headache and stuffy sinuses for two days. I’m nauseated and have no appetite. My energy level is minimal and I can’t bring myself to do anything other than lie down and nap, off and on, as I try not to drive my husband insane. And today, at the library picking up books, I hurt my shoulder – the one that physio healed for me – and it stings and burns and aches.

I’m short-tempered and tired and nauseated. I run the dishwasher and then cry while I unload it. I make dinner, put it on the table, and retreat to the bedroom so the kids won’t have to watch me literally weep my way through dinner. I run a load of laundry and cry while I put it in the dryer. I feed the dogs, they whine, I cry.

I cried in the parking lot at the library and I cried in line at the post office today.

This will not surprise you, but crying is not good for the sinuses or the headache.

The kids have been jerks to each other all week, lied to Coffee and I, skipped their chores, lost their brand new gloves (on the first day wearing them), ignored the rules.. and my patience is thinner than thin.

And because Coffee is insanely sick, I can’t even snuggle up to him – or hug him – because the very last thing we (and I) need is for me to be sick like him for the next week or two while the kids are home (and he’s not).

Really, I’d like to skip Christmas altogether – take down the tree, return the gifts – and just curl up under my duvet for the next 3.5 weeks and not speak to anyone, anywhere, or do anything at all. Someone, please kill me.