more than the vapours

Tuesday morning I went in to Hogsboro High to get the lay of the land. I was fairly good about my timing, although I arrived at 9:30 rather than 8:30 (I had wanted to do a school-day dry-run but sleep is so much more fulfilling than responsibility.) The whole morning, whenever anyone asked me about Blake, I felt waves of stomach cramps moving through me. "Not today," I begged. "I'll be able to talk about him next week, but today it's making me feel sick."

My new portable added to this rolling nausea. I was left with the impression of definite potential, but without much hope. If I felt this bad every time I came to teach, I reasoned, I would never feel motivated to decorate & nest.

Then I came home to find a sick baby. Moments later, the Boy staggered through the door, home sick and chalk white from a harrowing ride on transit. My nausea started to seem like more than mere vapours.

So yeah. We all came down with some kind of stomach bug, and spent the last day and a half recovering in our pajamas. I feel so much better now that I can hardly believe I was ill; I keep getting irritated with myself for not being more prepared for tomorrow, and then reminding myself that I thought I was going to vomit during most of the last 48 hours.

In any case, it's kinda comforting that my first "real" morning back didn't knock me over; a virus did. That bodes well for tomorrow.

Things I learned this week:

1. Rosalind had twins last week. I didn't even know she was pregnant. They're very premature; 26 weeks gestation I'm told. I'm trying to figure out a suitable gift.
2. The English Department at HH is unusually tight with a buck. I've always found it difficult to get supplies, but I thought the issue was school-wide. Turns out that while I'm on the hook for my own stapler and overhead transparencies, the other departments have actual supplies. Supplies they distribute. To teachers. Wild, eh?
3. I come from a family in love with paper supplies. We don't mind buying our own stuff, because then we get to buy other things. Today I bought 8 bookends, a binder, a pack of index cards, two rolls of tape, a stapler value pack, and a pack of clear document pockets. I enjoyed every minute of it.
4. Theresa was hospitalized last semester and took an extended sick leave from work. I learned this unpleasant news in an even more unpleasant fashion: C. Thomas Flood was in the office when I arrived on Tuesday. Blech all around.
5. Cuddles is dead. See previous link for picture.
6. There have been just enough changes to everything to make me paranoid. But enough shitty things have maintained to allow me the illusion of permanence.
7. There's nothing nicer than getting your photocopy code back. Unless it's getting your voicemail box back. I'm not Dustin Hoffman; I only have so much long-term memory available for number sequences.
8. Most of my business skirts are too small for me. I'm starting to think that with my new mama hips they may never fit without a good dose of appendicitis.
9. Blake doesn't really notice I'm gone until he wakes up from his nap. This is a mixed blessing.
10. It's better to have stomach flu than nerves so severely rattled that you can't eat. Stomach flu goes away in a few days while anxiety is the gift that keeps on giving.
11. "Fear of a Black Planet" is an excellent antidote to the 'I don't want to go back to my day-job' blues. (Although I almost started to cry during "Burn Hollywood Burn" because it reminded me of tooling joyously around the city with Blake at my back.)
12. Portables don't smell all that worse than Hogsboro High proper. At least I have a window to open.
13. Somebody took my stapler. Bastids.
14. It's not that bad.
15. But sometimes it's worse.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 2/03/2005 07:56:00 p.m.