Colds often come in two modes. The one where you're asleep. The other one where you're awake at odd hours due to irregular sleep and feel well enough to stare at a book or a screen, but not well enough to talk/ambulate.
My setting is on the latter, with the special "It's frickin' freezing!" loop played every ten minutes as I whimper for lack of a thousand blankies.
Weird story: so, I'm cold, so I decide to put on pants. I'm sorry that you had to learn that we don't always wear britches around here. That's a genuine apology, as I've known more than one person who wears shoes at home. Like, even when by themselves. I'm too sick to even try to get my head around it.
So, I go to the bedroom where my sweats are most likely to be. I have two pairs of sweats in rotation. It was three, but one day the elastic just went on my blue sweats. I can't wear them without tucking ten inches of fabric into each side of my undies, which doesn't stop me on laundry day. (It pairs nicely with the bleach-stained blue t-shirt with holes across the boob zone.) So, there are the black sweats (preferred for their pockets) and the light grey sweats. That's it.
So (this is the conjunction of the day), I go to the bedroom to find whichever pair of sweats I kicked off before hopping into bed for my nap. It's dark, but I feel some on the floor. I put them on. Something feels... odd. They're a little longer? Lighter weight? I step into the light of the living room.
I'm wearing DARK grey sweats/stretch pants. (The kind you don't quite wear to work out, as they look like "real" pants if you aren't paying attention, but are as soft and pliable as sweats.)
Okay, what the hell?
Before you assume that Mike has found a lover for those 35 minutes between his arrival at home and mine, someone with all of my casual wear qualities but just a little more upscale, I do know these pants. I remember wearing them often in Victoria and - gulp - I know I wore them while subbing at least once. (It's really an executive shade of grey, I swear. Add a red power tie and people might assume they're out of the loop on this new trend.)
I also know that I haven't worn them since moving here. It's too hot to wear them outside, and inside I stick to the grubbiest clothes possible. (And, as we all now know, a lot of the time I don't even wear pants. Think of it as living with a Rockette - endless gams.) These pants, last I saw them, were either in the back of the closet or perhaps even in a storage tub. I'm very, very big on only "usable and likely to be used" clothing taking up the good space in the closet.
But there they were, by the bed, in that discarded fashion of two leg holes on the floor surrounded by wads of cloth. And now that I think about it? I didn't even put sweats on when I came home, so this must be from yesterday.
When did I put these on? When did I rummage around, find these, put them on, wear them, then take them off?
And I know it wasn't Mike because a) he doesn't wear pants at home unless it's winter (sorry, again, just lie back and think of Radio City Music Hall), b) he's 10 inches taller than I am, and c) his part of the closet is separate from mine.
Is this what getting old is going to be like? We've gone from "Has any more exciting food appeared in the fridge since last I checked?" to "What did I come into this room for?" to, now, "Where did these pants come from?" Then will I just shrug and chomp into my dog-pee sandwich like Imogene Coca on Vacation?
I feel bad about taking a sick day in September, but why should I be miserable, zombied, and enduring the 40 minute crawl across town in the sun when it's just a day of assemblies? If anything, I should be pleased that I came in today (now yesterday), when I already felt semi-lousy, just because the kids are so much better this year that being around them doesn't make me feel worse. I'm not even secretly happy to get a break from them tomorrow. In fact, I'm bummed that I don't feel well enough to just prop myself up for the assemblies. (And maybe I can - I've set the alarm and will reevaluate in the morning, but I do hate to cancel on a sub at the last minute.)
(And as the night gets deeper and more toilet paper is stuffed up my nose, I do have to wonder who I'm fooling with this cheery talk.)
We got a royalty check today. Who is buying that book? STOP IT. I swear I'm going to get the rest of the trip report online for free. Really. I know I've been saying that for four years, but isn't it clear from the free typos with every post that I don't like to reread my own writing? So, rereading 500+ pages of it is full of sad. (But, thank you to the dozen unexpected people who, hopefully, were not full of sad when they read it. Every penny goes toward spoiling the hamily, who are always full of happy.)
Now I'm thinking of Mike's (Australian?) expression, "having a sad." As in, "Oh, so-and-so didn't get their way so now they're having a sad about it." Are the linguists working on this interesting LOLcat/Australia connection? Will it turn out that Ceiling Cat went above stairs on a boomerang? (And thus may someday return to save us all?)
Time to sleep some more. Ceiling cat, watch over me and my pants, for I know not what they do when they go running around by themselves at night.
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