Mostly Right With A Side Of Pox

I've been kind of stuffy/snotty/achy/logy for a couple of days now.  Mostly the whole thing smacks of allergies running wild, but it is a little difficult to keep the inner demons in check at times like this.  I awoke this morning with a bit of a pain in my right back and shoulder which was enough to set off the inevitable inner dialogue.

Hysterical Mind:  OH. MY. GOD.  It's "the pain!"  The PAIN, I tells ya!!  That's it.  We've got the pox.  The dreaded Monkey Pox is upon us once again and soon we will be struck down like something right out of the Bible and there is nothing we can do about it.  We should lie down immediately!


Rational Mind:  It's allergies.


HM:  The PAIN!!!  Ohhhh...the pain...we know this pain.  It is the same pain we got the second time we were stricken with the pox!


RM:  It's not the pox.  It was never the pox.  It was pneumonia and this is nothing like that.


HM:  Have I mentioned the pain?


RM:  Once or twice.  And it is also the pain we get when we sleep wrong.  Or when we lift things that women of our vintage should not be lifting.  Or if we move wrong.  We are old.  How come you never worry about that?


HM:  I'm busy.  I don't multi-task as well as I used to.  And now I've got this pain going on so don't be expecting me to start thinking about our rapidly aging cells because I don't have time for that at the moment.  I need to focus.


RM:  We don't have pneumonia.  We don't have any of our other usual symptoms.  Relax.  If you need to stress about something, why not worry about how we might break a hip or set the record for the longest perimenopause in history?  


HM:  I feel dizzy...


Add to this my usual start-of-the-school-year denial and it's really quite the show around here.  Every year at this time, I start making promises about how I'm going to go in earlier than usual and get the classroom set up so I won't have to worry about it.  I always seem to find an excuse to put it off and end up making the trip days and days after my self-imposed deadline.  It's like a ritual with me and the allergy bout/pulled shoulder was shaping up to be a darned good excuse for this year's Dance Of Denial.

Hence, I was as surprised as anyone when I actually got out of bed this morning at 5:30, showered and headed out like I said I was going to.  I was shocked, if you want the truth.  I managed to get gas in the car and arrive at school in a rather timely fashion and was soon putting up posters like I genuinely wanted to be doing this.  In fact, I stayed a bit longer than I originally planned just to make sure it was all done and even had time to meet with my director briefly.

(That ended up being something of a stress-maker since it appears they had yet another meeting without me last month and changed my caseload.  For the worse.  Again.  But, I don't want to think about that now.  I'd rather think about the pox, if you want the truth...)

Now I can sit back, secure in the knowledge that the classroom is ready to go and enjoy the rest of my dwindling summer vacation.  I cast on for a pair of socks yesterday since the Situationally Necessary Octagonal Thing (SNOT) was misbehaving and that should keep me entertained for a while.  Of course, I told myself that I was doing this because there is a teacher workshop coming up and that I like to have a sock in the works for this kind of thing.  The truth of the matter is that this is the third time I've set aside a project for bad behavior this summer and the pile of naughty knitting is getting kind of high.

But I went in and set up the classroom like I said I was going to even though I wasn't feeling well and also didn't strangle my director for telling me about the caseload change that I specifically told her I was not in agreement with.  (there was a witness...)  I think I deserve to knit whatever the heck I want right now.

Wait.  HM is saying something.  What's that?  Oh, I hadn't thought of that.  Interesting....

It seems that HM is thinking that we are too stricken with the pox to even consider starting school on the first of next month.  We will probably still be lying abed at that point.  She wonders if we should just start arranging for a substitute now and beat the rush.

I guess maybe I do feel a little "poxy" now that I think about it...

SA