I’ve been sick. You can tell just exactly how much I don’t feel good by the fact that I haven’t complained about it much. I don’t have the energy.

This past week was especially rough as breathing has been a task. Since when should trying to suck oxygen into your being be hard work?

We had made plans to go to Cedar Point for their very spooky and fun filled event known as Halloweekend and I was having major reservations. I didn’t feel well, what if I went and it rained? What if I got sicker? What if I died midway through a roller coaster and they had to pry my cold dead hands off the side of the cart?

Some of my concerns where crazy of course, but then there arised some that I didn’t even give a thought to.

We arrived in Sandusky around 2am and settled into our rooms. At around 3 we went to bed and this is when concern number one hit me. My pillow. It was flat. It was flatter than a fart squeezed out by an elephant who was sitting on a concrete slab. I bunched it, I turned it, I scrunched it, I flipped it.. nothing made it more than it was. I even tried sighing dramatically at it with vexed exasperation. But that didn’t matter because Jason (who was sick as well) snored until 6:30am. I know it was 6:30 because I had spent the three and a half hours since laying down listening to him sleep loudly. Then for some unknown (to me ) reason, he stopped at 6:30. “At Last!” I screamed inside my own head and got down to the business of sleeping myself. Except sleep never came so at 8, when the kids in the hotel ingested the compliementary bucket of sugar that the hotel provided and began to run amuk in the halls, I was leaning on my elbow trying to breathe.

The next surprise for me was when I drug my sleep deprived unbreathing carcus into the shower. All I needed, I thought, was a nice hot shower to loosen up the congestion in my head and get me ready for the day. Imagine my shock and dismay when I turned the water in the shower on and the hot water was just as cold as the cold water. Possibly colder. I had apparently missed the “shower window” in the hotel.

I grumbled my way through getting dressed and we ventured out under a gray and cloudy sky to find breakfast before we went into the park. Once we had some food (by this time, lunch, as McDonald’s was the only place open in the area and was also serving lunch by this point in time) I began to systematically suck down a variety of medication in the hope that something would allow me to suck some small amount of air through the holes that I used to rely on so heavily.

We arrived at the park and it certainly did not disappoint. We spent the morning and afternoon there until around 4:30 when the winds had finally chilled us to the bone and the rain had dampened our spirits enough to venture back out to find something for dinner in a warm and dry location.

After dinner (and a win by Penn State!) we made our way back to the park. It was getting dark now. Things were certainly going to begin to get interesting. We finished out or tour de force of hitting as many coasters as humanly possible and left the park as it closed around midnight; unable to walk a single step farther than the car.

That evening I had somehow found the correct ingredient to ingest that I was able to get a few, precious (6) hours of sleep before waking up the next morning and preparing to depart. My head pounded and throbbed with wreckless abandon for the remainder of the day. And I had to do housework and homework on top of that when I arrived home.

For the past two days I have been going to bed at roughly 8pm in an attempt to recapture the sleep that I so desperately needed. Given the chance to do it all over again I would certainly do it, however I would change two things:

1) Bring my own pillow

2) Not be sick

It’s Friday. It’s also been an extremely long week. Epicly long. The type of long that seems too long to be true.

The thing about long weeks is you have to let them go or else they’ll bog you down and destroy the far too short weekend.

That’s what I’m doing this weekend. I’m letting it melt away.

Today is Monday. It is also raining outside. Oddly enough though, there is no downage. And it’s odd because everything that would normally cause a bad day to form has happened and yet I’m still feeling really energized and ready to go.

I think its because I did something for myself this weekend. I’ve spent the last few weeks doing homework, which indirectly is for myself I suppose, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m doing busy work for someone else to prove to them that I know what I’m talking about (ha!) so that I can get a good grade and move onto the next banal subject.

But today somehow none of that seems very important or angst worthy. I think it’s because I kind of one upped myself last night. After we took the trash out and put away all the laundry I was pretty much ready to just sit down and do absolutely nothing. Instead I loaded the dishwasher and ran it. That’ll be one less thing I have to do tonight and I can unload it when I get home and the sink will be completely empty. It’ll be such a nice feeling to be on top of everything where everything in this case is dishes.

I do this sometimes with my lunch too and I should really do it more often. I usually pack a sandwich of some sort for lunch and sometimes (less than I should) I pack the insides up on Sundays into baggies so that all I have to do in the morning is eat breakfast, put some bread in a bag and blearily stumble out the door. I find that this gives me more wake up time in the morning and I don’t have to feel like I’m scrambling to catch up with something.

It’s the little things, the shortcuts, that we install for ourselves that make life easier.

This week. This one right here. This is by far the longest week I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. And everything about this week? It’s just off. Not off as in no lights on or the power has been disconnected off. Off as in left field off, water under the dam and over the bridge off, a jump to the left and a step to the right off. In short, it’s been awful. (See what I did there?)

I was commenting to a coworker of mine today that it felt like I was a lion tamer in a zoo and an earthquake was about to hit because all the animals were banging around in their cages. And it’s really true.

It all started last Thursday when an innocent question and request for follow up and then turned into (as these things often do) someone taking it upon themselves to do something that they shouldn’t have done. So, imagine my surprise Monday when I began to deal with a hurricane of aftermath that has yet to subside.

I found out why all of these things are happening though and it all makes perfect sense. Today is the full moon.

Now you might think that I myself am a crazy person (and you might be correct in that assumption) but there is something that holds true about the full moon. During a full moon (and particularly the day before the full moon which is traditionally known as the day before the full moon. Kind of the day after too.) a lot of freaky shit goes down.

The crazies come out. I can’t tell you how many times people of questionable mental stability have either telephoned in or shown up at my office. Apparently they feel the tidal lunar pull and really just want to pick up the phone and touch someone.

People begin to act outside their normal orbit of behaviors. People who are typically very nice and even tempered will freak out about the smallest of detail or occurance. They’ll take issue with things that are non-issues until they become issues.

I really suggest that everyone stay in doors today. Lock up the wife and kids (or cats.. ya know, whatever you have handy) and hide. Today would be the perfect day to stay in bed with the covers up to your nose and snuggle with some kittens. Keep the blinds drawn, avoid telephone calls (you never know when a crazy is going to be on the other end) and just ride it out. By next Monday everything should have once again righted itself.