It is the kind of sick where you are bored and cagey inside but your body won't obey you and get better, and so there you lay. I had to cancel Friday evening plans. And then everything got very singular. I watched a movie. I slept. I made tea. I ate a cough drop. I blew my nose. More tea. More movies. More sleeping. Very basic living here. On repeat. I've talked to 3 people on the phone all weekend, and I've begun to feel like it's just me in the world and a bunch of 90s movies I'd forgotten existed. There was not energy for anything more.
At one point yesterday I realized how low supplies were at my house, and that I really did need to go to Target if I wanted to brush my teeth at the end of the weekend, so I rallied and told myself I'd go to church and then Target. A little outing.
But then my car wouldn't start.
It was at this point that I started to get a little pitiful and doomsday-ish in my mind. I called my mom and told her what I was sick of. And then I got out of my car and called AAA and someone came to help me. Calling AAA is always a fine practice in asking for help. Do I know a thing about cars? Not hardly. And it's while I'm waiting for someone to take care of my problem that I ask myself, 'Why don't you know anything about cars?' But that is another conversation.
Someone came to help me today and gave me kindly advice about what is really not a very big problem at all in this cold weather, and I made my way to Target. I got said supplies, and even opened up the Kleenex box for a tissue before paying for it. As I was blowing my nose, I was thinking, 'This is my view of rebellion?' But today it is.
And then I trudged out to my car and the very nicest thing happened. I was loading my car in some sort of haze and parents of a former student, someone way past 8th grade now, greeted me in the kindest way. I don't know why, but it was like an old homecoming to see them again and I needed that greeting. I always initiate things, and today, when I couldn't or even wouldn't, they did. I don't even think I said anything that coherent, but they were genuinely happy to see me and talk and it was good medicine.
On a Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks note....I feel an appropriate kinship with this scene from 'You've Got Mail' because my apartment looks like that right now. Some semblance of order, but really none in the end, and I don't even care. The only major difference here is that there is not someone bringing me daisies, and it's not spring in New York. It's winter in Minnesota. Really different. But the way she acts in this scene, good or bad or in between, is the resigned way I've been living this weekend too.
Time for tea.
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