I think “malaise” is the right word to describe my last few days. I’m not in the mood for anything, I took a five-hour “nap” this afternoon because despite a cup of coffee and a Mountain Dew I was falling asleep every time I sat down for more than a few seconds, and my stomach and head hurt. I know this is my third day in a row with a nothing post, but Christ, I can’t get my brain moving to save my life right now. I emailed my boss just now to find out when the building was going to be open again. I have enough stuff changing this year– a new curriculum, just for starters, and I’m seriously thinking about going permanently back to pencil and paper assignments and saying to hell with the iPads entirely– that I really ought to start heavy thinking and planning, and I may as well do that in my classroom if I can.
But … man. Right now I just want my head to turn back on.
Granted, the thermometer outside the window in my kitchen is in constant direct sunlight, but it says 108 degrees. Yesterday I was out of town. Today I have spent a significant amount of my time awake attached to the toilet. I haven’t had a Mounjaro Day in months, but that’s really what this feels like, and one way or another, it’s 8:06 PM and I’m done with today and going to bed.
I’ve complained about this a couple of times, but my CPAP has been making this godawful whining noise every time I inhale lately, and over the course of the night it gets louder and louder until I unplug the hose from the back of the thing and plug it back in, at which point the process repeats itself. I thought I had come up with a way to minimize if not fix it, but I’m fairly certain I got no more than half an hour of sleep last night, including when I gave up on sleeping in bed and went into the living room to my Comfy Chair to try and follow my body into taking a nap. Which didn’t work.
I don’t remember how I slept before I had this thing; it is entirely possible that I never actually did, but one way or another I can’t sleep without it now. So I finally gave up this morning and, after burning in my very last sick day for the year, because no one deserves me on half an hour of sleep, I figured out who I was supposed to call to talk about warranties and replacements and repairs and a bunch of other shit I didn’t really know anything about.
Turns out a “lightly used” reconditioned CPAP was only $150 and will be here tomorrow, so I went with that option. “Lightly used” means under a thousand hours; mine has nearly seven thousand hours of use, and it comes with a year warranty, so … yeah. I’m tasking my wife with waking me up in the morning, putting in earplugs, and taking a couple of Tylenol PM before going to bed tonight, so hopefully I can get enough sleep that I’m at least able to function tomorrow.
And if I can’t? Oh well. I’m going in anyway. There’s twelve days of school left. It’ll be fine.
I am proud to report that, for what feels like the first time in years, I went to work five days this week, and in fact managed to be early to work on two of those five days. I am hoping to be able to continue this trend next week, which is going to be the end of the quarter and includes two ILEARN days and Pi Day, which math teachers are supposed to pretend is important and I generally do my best to ignore. This year it’s falling on a Friday on the day after all of my kids’ work is due and my grades are due, though, so coming up with something fun and foolproof might actually be a pretty good use of my time.
One month until Spring Break. If you’re counting. I’m not counting. I refuse to count.
I spent yesterday light-headed and exhausted, taking a five-hour nap in the afternoon, and today featured Mounjaro Diarrhea, so I’m pretty sure I’ve been through every single symptom that exists in the last couple of weeks and I am ready to be healthy for a while. We are 1/6 of the way through 2025 and so far every second of it has sucked. I’m ready for March to reverse that trend.
I am giving the antibiotics24 more hours to make the pressure and the constant ringing in my ears stop, and if it does not I plan to fully lose my mind, at which point I will either fling myself off a bridge or begin murdering people. It’s 50/50 which it’ll be. Ear infections fucking suck.
Got a new book from Amazon today, and the damned thing was mis-bound, with the cover a good quarter inch or more off from where it was supposed to be. Ultimately it’s no big deal, because I can just exchange it, but I’ve never seen this in a new book before. (Entirely possible that this is because Amazon specifically has never sent me one; no brick and mortar bookstore would even let these make it out to the floor; they’d have been damaged out immediately once they came out of the box.)
I survived my first day back, although I do mean “survived” in the most specific meaning of the term, certainly not one that implies any teaching took place. I foolishly neglected to take any drugs before leaving the house other than my antibiotics, which meant that the first thing I did when I left work was go to a drugstore and buy the methy kind of Sudafed, the one you have to ask for and have your ID scanned. I do actually have an ear infection, according to my school nurse, but she says the antibiotics I’m already on will take care of it. We’ll see!
Let’s see, what else? Spent the evening fighting off the urge to buy another fountain pen or two. My rapid cycling through obsessions and hobbies is fucking breathtaking, y’all. I need to become obsessed with saving money for a while. The world economy is about to tank (mental note: save $1,000 as quickly as possible, withdraw it in cash, and keep it in the house) and even if that wasn’t the case (or if I wasn’t already first against the wall as an atheist, outspokenly liberal teacher running the gay kids’ club in a rural area of a red state) my kid is gonna be driving in a couple of years. You’d think I’d at least be able to sock money away for a car.
Alternatively, we’ll be scrounging the wastelands for food in a couple of years, so why not buy fountain pens now while they’re still being manufactured?
I’ve still got a fever, so I called out for tomorrow already, the ear is still clogged, and now my teeth hurt. So life continues to be a barrel of fuckin’ joy over here.
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