« This is not my beautiful house | Main | Mary Ellen and the terrible, rotten, no good day »
March 09, 2002
Hi!
Um. Yeah. Long time, no entry. You're not really surprised, though, are you?
I've been sick lately -- the Cold from Hell, which I initially thought was a sinus infection until the bouts of marathon sneezing and nose-blowing began. I ended up taking one full day off work last Friday (when I woke up with a fever and sinuses that felt like they were on fire, thus my suspicion that I had a sinus infection) and two partial days (when I had the full-blown Cold from Hell). I went to work last Monday and felt like death on toast, so my boss sent me home. I worked all day Tuesday, because a coworker was out, and felt miserable all day long. It didn't help that it was apparently Annoy the Living Hell Out Of Mary Ellen day, either -- all day long, all I had was either clueless people who needed to be led around by the hand, or people who were unbearably rude and demanding. Gah. Wednesday, I really wanted to call in sick -- I had spent Tuesday night sneezing, blowing my nose, and whimpering, while trying to watch Buffy through watery eyes, and I just fely horrid. I didn't call in sick because I wasn't sure the coworker who had been out that day would be back Wednesday -- she tends to take a lot of days off, and if she isn't there, I have to be -- and my hunch was correct. I got a message from her on my cel phone Wednesday morning saying she wouldn't be in, so I doped myself up with the strongest cold medicine I could find, and went to work. Even that wasn't enough -- I spent the morning trying to help students with a handful of Kleenex clamped to my nose, trying not to sneeze all over the place. When my boss came in, she gave me a stern look and asked why I hadn't kept my germs at home. I felt okay by then -- my nose was still running like a faucet, and I was sneezing every three seconds (Oh yeah, I'm sexy. That's right.) but I was so giddy from the medicine I'd taken that I didn't care. I didn't want to leave them shorthanded at work, but I also didn't want to spread my germs to everyone else, so my boss told me to go home, and not to touch anything on my way out. I straggled home, and spent the rest of the day on the couch watching mindless TV. The cold has mostly passed now, which is good, except that my nose is all chapped and sore, and I won't get to spend any more afternoons on the couch, snuggles under a blanket watching TV. Oh, well.
One happy thing: I'm going to Florida in May! With my mom! Hurrah! See, I was supposed to go to JournalCon 2 back in October, but what with everything that had happened in September, I ended up staying home. I was going to go anyway, but my mom asked me not to, and since I'm terrified of flying anyway, it didn't take much to convince me. The problem was, I'd already bought my plane ticket. American refused to refund it -- I called, and a very snotty woman told me I couldn't get a refund, too damn bad if I didn't want to fly. I emailed, and got no reply, until a month of two later, when a travel voucher for $235 appeared in my mailbox. Hurrah! I immediately called my mom and started pestering her to go to Florida with me, so we could visit my grandparents. This past weekend, I finally got the go-ahead from her to buy the tickets . I don't envy the poor woman who booked the tickets over the phone -- I was nervous and excited, and afraid I'd mess something up, so I asked 8,000 questions and hemmed and hawed and was generally a pain. She was sounding annoyed until I said "Hey, I'm booking these tickets so my mom and I can go see my grandparents -- wehaven;t seen them in almost 5 years, and I'm afraid I'm going to mess up or something." There was a long pause, and then she said "Oh, that sounds so nice! You'll have such a good time!" After that, she was careful to use very small words to explain everything to me, and was even patient when I had to call my mom on my cel phone (while still on the regular phone with her) to get a security code thingy for my mom's credit card. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I called my grandparents to let them know we were coming. My grandpa, who is normally very quiet and somber and stoic, ansered the phone. When I told him we were coming, he said "Great! Maybe we'll even pick you up at the airport." He also advised me to leave all my guns and expolsives at home, and said that, if I couldn't bear to part with them, I could always Fed-Ex them to Florida. Hee. (Okay, so maybe that's funnier if you know my grandpa. But trust me, it was hysterical.)
So that's a happy thing. An unhappy thing was having a fight over the phone with my brother recently -- we have this fight about once a year or so, and it just makes me tired, and sad. We were having a nice conversation, joking around, until he started listing off all of my personality flaws, one by one. He told me that I'm incredibly self-centered, and that the only reason I finished school and have a decent job is because I'm all "me me me me, and fuck everyone else." His evidence? Things that happened when we were little kids -- when I was 4-8 years old. Sigh. I've talked to my mom at length about it, and I can understand, I guess, what makes him do this. I just wish he could understand that I'm not trying to compete with him, and I never have. I don't think I'm better than him. I don't think ill of him, period. I think he's a wonderful person, and I love him more than he knows. (And I know this is disjointed and probably doesn't make sense, but there was a lot more to the conversation I had with him, and I don't want to rehash it all here. It just makes me sad, and tired.) I'm trying to shrug it off, but damn, it hurt. I like my brother a lot. He's smart, and funny, and a really sweet person. He's had a rough life, and he's made some bad decisions, but he made them with the best of intentions. he and I -- we're very different people. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. But I still admire him, and beyond loving him, I like him a whole lot, just for who he is. I'm getting tired of trying to make him like me -- I mean, I know he loves me, but I don't think he likes me very much. There's a difference, and... well, it just makes me tired, and sad.
Posted by Mary Ellen at March 9, 2002 11:34 PM