Thursday, January 31st, 2002 - Fowl
Last week was interrupted halfway through by an office plague. Shawna had just come by my desk to ask me if the cold I'd had the week and a half before had included body aches. No, I told her, not really. A little later Janice sent me over to help in shipping; we take turns doing this, so we can each have our stint away from our desks. There's no central heat in the office, only space heaters (one for every two people), so moving around in shipping usually makes you feel warmer. Usually. Last Wednesday it made me colder. I was shaking. I also was getting some of the worst lower-back pain I've had in awhile (think horrible menstrual cramping). I kept squatting down, stretching, pulling up one knee, then the other, trying to stretch out my poor back. Pain killers were not kicking in. Nausea (from the pain?) and dizziness came marching in, hand in hand. I called the doctor and got an appointment for that afternoon and left early. It's now the next Wednesday, and it's my first full day back at work. Our weekly email update thingie this week apologizes for the end of last week; on Thursday and Friday we had only Janice and Cate left in the office; the rest of us were home, shaking and moaning and wishing we could heal faster. This is the sickest I've been since I spent a whole winter in Indiana, 5 years ago. It was horrible. Body aches, (especially joints and the tops of my feet, for some reason), headaches, nausea (I finally vomited on Friday, nothing but water), coughing and extreme difficulty in breathing. Those last two are still around, visited occasionally by the nausea and headaches. But, I'm functioning again. Sort of. While I was home on Thursday, resting in my bed, drifting in my cough-syrup-with-codeine haze, I heard the back door open. I listened in wonder as my two landlords entered my house, talking trash about us, opening the refrigerator door, commenting on the pile of stuff in the dining room (which is going to Goodwill), remarking on how hot it was in there and turning the heat down (I was having cold flashes). Now, on both Tuesday and Wednesday, they'd been in the house while we weren't there to fix things, but they had called the night before and we had given them permission. They hadn't called Wednesday night; they had just assumed they could get away with it because they knew we weren't usually home at that time of day. I kept quiet, hoping I wouldn't have to cough (yay, cough syrup), until I finally got up and went to pee in the toilet that is right off my room (a little closet-like room, very near the bed; I never bother to close its door, as it's my bedroom). I should note that I sleep in the buff, so I'm sitting on the toilet completely naked when my bedroom door opens and my landlady walks in. My reaction was so eloquent: "Hey! Hey! What the FUCK!" I hear her exclaim, and she shuts my door and runs out my back door into her front door (they live right behind me). I'm right behind her, throwing on a bathrobe and storming out my back door without my glasses. The landlord is in the yard, pretending to water (yeah, right) and the landlady is in her house, frantically trying to look busy. He gives me some shit about how he called "hello" when he first came in and accuses me of ignoring that. I inform him that I didn't know they were going to be in the house today, that they HAVE to call and get permission, not just sneak in when they think we won't be there, and what the fuck was she doing going into my bedroom anyway? He said there was something broken in there she wanted to show him, and I'd locked the door the other two days that week. Yeah, I locked the door, because there is NOTHING in my room that I need fixed and I don't trust her not to snoop. I really am sorry I was right about her snooping. I'm writing a letter, once I calm down about this, just to leave a paper trail about this incident. I'm not pressing charges or anything, but I figure I should note that they did something illegal. I figure if she can put a clause in the lease saying we have to clean the oven, I can note that she entered my house without our permission and ran like a scared, guilty rabbit when I caught her trying to snoop through my room. Grr.	Exercise log: I'm sick. I'll exercise when I'm well again. Writing log: See above. Current Publications: "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind I'm currently reading: Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce Northern Gothic by Nick Mamatas Books on Tape (usually while exercising): Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins.
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