Welts and Whining
So… 2008? Hasn’t really been a friend to me thus far.
Neither, really, has this week.
I’m not particularly inclined to go into details right now. But I do have a question about one thing that’s been aggravating the hell out of me: don’t mosquitoes usually die in winter?
See, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning today yesterday to go use the bathroom. I had trouble falling asleep, and then found myself tossing and turning in a mostly futile attempt to quell an all-over itch I thought had to do with the dry weather.
And then I heard the buzz of an insect.
I considered getting out of bed to search for the damn thing. But I was too tired and didn’t really have any hope of finding it anyway—never mind actually killing it, given my awful reflexes and abysmal hand-eye coordination—so I let it go, thought about other things, and eventually had a very weird dream involving a dog speaking German.
I completely forgot about the itching and the buzzing. But I was brushing my hair tonight and hit upon a huge welt on the side of my neck. Then I found others under my chin and on the inside of my knee. And now that I’ve touched them, they all itch like mad—just utter brilliance on my part.
Surely this isn’t normal? Especially considering I haven’t opened a window since the heating was turned on in November? How the hell did this happen?
And why isn’t it Friday yet?
Ugh, Redux
This semester’s going to hurt.
All in all, I might have just finished the least restful winter break of my entire life. My cousins, almost all my maternal cousins, were around for Christmas and New Year’s, the first time we’ve ever been altogether. And, well, why sleep when time is limited and you’re having so much fun? (Even if you’re already sleep deprived from finals?) Especially considering you’d have almost two weeks to catch up on sleep until classes start?
Sigh.
I don’t regret that I spent most of that time in the hospital with my grandmother instead of sleeping. After all, I didn’t have anything really crucial to do (seriously, what’s more important than spending time with my grandmother?), and she has a long road of hospitalization and recovery ahead of her; it’s better that my parents saved their vacation days for when I wouldn’t be around. And it’s not like I have lots of opportunities to spend extended amounts of time with her, regardless of the circumstances.
But, God help me—I’m so tired.
After an almost endless string of doctors and x-rays and IVs and nurses and physical therapists and a cot entirely inconducive to actual rest, not to mention trays of crappy food that you need to coax my grandmother to eat even though I’d sooner eat dog food myself, return to my normal life seems like a dream. My mind seems completely unable to process the fact that classes start in considerably less than 24 hours, and that I should hit the ground running. For that matter, my mind seems unable to process much of anything at all.
Damnit.
Ugh.
Less than two hours ago, I heard a loud crash and found my grandmother on the kitchen floor. She’s now in the hospital with a fractured wrist, and is undergoing more tests for other stuff as we speak.
As I waited for the paramedics, all I could keep thinking was, what a hell of a way to start 2008.
Damnit.
Where Have I Been All Summer, You Ask?
“I’m not going to say goodbye,” said my boss tonight as I signed off on my last stages of This Summer’s Big Project and tidied up the office I’ve been using. “Because, really, we can consider this to have been stage one.”
“Oh, you are staying!” grinned a staff member who’d stopped by my door to mention something to my boss.
“Yep,” my boss confirmed. “We’re just about to put [This Summer’s Big Project] to bed and we decided to extend our agreement. It’ll be good—she’ll keep me sane and make sure we get the next one out.”
“I won’t be here as often,” I clarified. “But I’ll still be around a couple times a week.”
“I’m glad you’ll be here,” said the staff member. “It’s been great having you.”
“Thanks, I feel the same,” I told her in all honesty. “But it’ll be nice to get a little break away from all this stuff. A couple weeks will do me good.”
Finally tally on This Summer’s Big Project before it gets handed over to the editing team? 6000+ words of research and abbreviated interviews; roughly 15 single-spaced pages in Word.
(At least he’ll be paying me this time.)
All the Waiting Put Together
Update (1 August): I finished the book earlier today, and am busy re-reading parts to clarify my thoughts about it. A review is planned (but given my track record, hardly guaranteed.
I think I’ll need to hide under a rock for the next couple of weeks.
Tonight is Release Night, but I won’t be reading the last Harry Potter book until the end of July at the very earliest. Which would be fine if I didn’t give a damn about being spoiled—but I do. I totally do. And that fact, more than anything else, is making me afraid of interacting of my fellow human beings.
I’m hesitant about leaving my apartment tomorrow. I’m tempted to turn off my phone entirely. I’ve closed my feed reader and temporarily banned it from my dock, in a (probably vain) attempt to not read any blog posts about it. I won’t be visiting any of my usual internet haunts until I’ve got the last tome in my hands and finished reading it. Hell, I have email in my inbox from friends who are die-hard Harry Potter fans that I won’t be reading for quite a while—just in case.
I look at what I’m doing and not doing, and the rational part of me is very disgusted by how wrapped up I’ve become in all this nonsense. This is, after all, exactly the sort of hysterically overblown pop culture phenomenon I normally disdain. And yet…
For those who have read the series in real time, the Harry Potter books have been as much about waiting as anything else. There was a unique sort of frustration that came after finishing the latest volume—the one that took months or years to get here: after all that waiting, there were four or six or eight hours of relief. But afterward? There was yet another pause, a space for still more waiting. For much of the English-speaking world, after the next day or so, that won’t be true anymore. And, somehow, that finality is more precious, more meaningful, and yet more frustrating, than all the waiting put together.
I have friends in other time-zones who have already gotten their hands on Deathly Hallows and are no doubt reading it voraciously as I type this. By the time they get around to reading this, it will likely be all over for them. And this time, there will be nothing more to wait for.
So, as I bury my head back into the rapidly multiplying work-related sand over the next week or so, I am trying to preserve what I can, to hold on to what many other human beings will no longer have. It’s disdainful and it’s arguably selfish, but that’s the truth of it.
In a few hours, many in the world will have finished their adventures at Hogwarts, but I’m still determined to hold on to the waiting and its special magic.