a chronicle of misery: the week before finals

dr. bradshaw and his wife lesley have two sons (see diagram), who will soon be home for the holidays. while preparing for their arrival, lesley fell down the stairs. i believe dr. bradshaw used the word "gruesome" to describe the event. in my head, there were christmas ornaments flying, tinsel trailing down the stairs, and blood everywhere. clearly i've never met her, and i've only seen things from the end of the old man. he appeared at the office only briefly on tuesday, hair unkempt and voice ragged. and he had the nerve to ask me how i am, how i'm feeling about my abroad trip! he won't let anyone help him, so i have been feeling utterly useless all week.
on monday night, eva was complaining of a sore throat, worrisome because it seems that she only just kicked the flu and its lingering symptoms. then at cowpie she went and COUGHED ON MY FOOD and it was mexican monday and i couldn't not eat it! mere moments (hours) later, my own throat started to feel a bit sore. morgan asked her biology professor for me, and HE said that someone coughing on your food can't give you a cold. but i beg to differ! i've gotten steadily more congested and disgusting-feeling as the week has gone on.
what's the best way to get better? SLEEP! comes the rousing reply from the chorus of everybody in the world. guess what my life is utterly lacking? monday night, i forget all your hazy details. my throat was sore, i started downing ungodly amounts of tea. i had had a panic moment in that afternoon's banjo class when i learned the set list for our concert, only two days away. instead of doing any of my *important* homework, i played banjo all night. why did i chomp off my fingernails and render myself useless for clawhammer?!?! oh yes, because one must destroy one's body while composing a 7-pager in 4 hours. thank you, body, for donating yourself to the cause once again. but why oh why won't you just do what you're supposed to do on these stupid strings? part of the problem was certainly the temperature; my room is a veritable ice box. the point is that i sat in morgan's room and strummed for hours until katherine and brett rang morgan's phone for our conference call. did we make any decisions? i don't know. but i felt pretty shitty afterwards. finally around 3am i lay my body down.... and tossed and turned and couldn't catch a wink until at least 6:30. also i forgot to ask morgan to wake me up and i had no alarm clock without a phone, so i slept straight till 10. my history teacher seemed understanding in her email. dr. b was absent, so grammar was a 15 minute q+a sesh with TA jenn, whom i have decided that i like a lot.
tuesday night is always a misery night because it is the night my study abroad group meets. this time, naomi from international programs came to talk to us about not drinking too much or doing drugs at all or leaving the group. i got all confused about money conversion stuff and what to pack and whether i made the right decision by deciding to go on this stupid trip. back in the land of doors, ben and i sat down to work on our astronomy lab reports when renee and eva appeared at the door and suddenly a mighty sound was heard throughout the land of doors: FIRE ALARM. beautiful. we threw on shoes and coats over our pajamas and tramped out into the rain storming night. every dorland resident huddled in the smoking hut not smoking for once. the fire truck arrived and RD kat said the locked mystery room in the basement was emitting smoke. possibly breakers or some such thing. we didn't want to wait around in the cold anymore, so we went to ben's room and ate his ancient candy and sat on his roommate's bed and poked at stuff. an hour later, the doors of dorland were still closed to us, so we trudged across the bridge to a worser place: sunderland. in fact, the worst place: sunderland BASEMENT. there, we were greeted by a quite nude ilinca who fed us water in huge kitchen jars and saltines with nutella and peanut butter. she even gave me a hello kitty thermos full of mint tea leftover from dinner... still sort of warm five hours later! we watched the episode of buffy where she tries out for the cheerleading squad but uh oh all the cheerleaders are losing various body parts! eva didn't know what was going on the whole time and either narrated to us what was happening, asked for clarification about what was happening, or said aloud what her brain told her. we finally made it back into dorland around 12:30, about 3 hours after we were displaced. there, i played banjo, had possible heart-to-heart with morgan, played banjo, felt sick, called brett, spoke without thinking, felt sad, felt sick, and got into bed at maybe 2ish. received text messages from tom, missed him terribly. and then, it happened again: i couldn't sleep. morgan says i probably slept a little without realizing it, but i know i was awake when the sun came up. had some weird dreams that i have forgotten now... i should get back into the habit of writing these things down, maybe. but there were moments when i couldn't tell if i was dreaming or if i was just inventing visions for myself as i lay there sleepless. anyway, i'm pretty sure i was awake or at least half-awake when my alarm went off, so i just stayed in bed all morning.
wednesday was another waste. i tried to work on my lab report, but i had already made up my mind to skip that class. instead of lunch or class, i went to the health center to get a sick note. this was sort of crazy because the health center has been temporarily relocated to some crazy cottage out past eco-dorm that i had to walk up this weird little woods path to find. here's the stupid part: i wore the new boots my mom ordered me from l.l. bean. in my sickness stupor, i didn't think about how disgustingly muddy it was gonna be on this walk or the fact that, wonder of wonders, the boots might not fit... which of course, they didn't, and now they are all muddy even though i tried to wash them off when i got home. i am gonna return them anyway. fuck some shoes. anyway, it doesn't say anything about mud on the return policy. the rest of the day was stupid but fine: corrected paper corrections at work, heard about a carbon monoxide leak in gladfelter, ate a very tiny but tasty dinner at cowpie, played my stupid banjo concert at which i couldn't even hear myself playing, called my parents and complained, and got in bed at about 11 without doing a lick of homework. this time, i KNOW i got some sleep, but i did not by any means have a good night's sleep. i kept waking up coughing or not being able to breathe through my nose. i don't think i had any dreams, i don't think i slept long enough at any moment.
my alarm went off at 8:30 this morning. i went straight to morgan's room to ask for her sage advice. thank god, she told me to stay home and rest. she even gave me her hot pot so i would have a steady supply of peppermint tea. i haven't left my room all day, not for anything. i have watched the world go light and dark through my window. i slept a lot, until 2:30 when i decided that if i napped anymore, i wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. i have been listening to music and poking at the internet since then. i need to figure out how long i have to turn in all the assignments i missed... i don't feel like doing any work at all, but next week, as i may have mentioned, is MISERY EXAM WEEK and i have lots lots lots to do. but, tonight might not be the night. morgan did bring me a bagel this morning, but other than that, i haven't eaten all day... except for gallons of tea and 1 (one) garlic pill. that's the real problem with sick days. so anyway, it's late now, and i better run to cowpie before it's too late. tonight they're having carmelized onion and squash pasta plus quinoa and black bean soup! i am excited for soup yumyum.
apologies if i have totally butchered the english language in this post. i blame congested fuzzy headedness.

listening to: the mountain goats - jaipur