February Already?

I'm so sorry, lovelies, for my radio silence of late. Like many people across the blogoverse, I've had the most wretched cold -- as in, I can't remember being in so much pain and had many moments where I thought I'd reverted to childhood and was going to break down and begin to cry incessantly from a bad ear infection. Not cool. This morning was the first in a while that when I woke up I felt good. I'm still coughing, still have my little camper table aclutter with snot rags, still don't expect much from myself. Yesterday, I went stir crazy and decided I was going to go for a drive to Starbucks, which from Weird Mountain Town takes about twenty minutes. By the time I drove through the other weird mountain towns and to a normal sprawly city, my back really hurt. While I had thought I might read or whatever at Starbucks, I found myself exhausted and just wanted to go home. (Or maybe I just wanted to get back in the car to listen to my book-on-CD, Steve Martin's irrepressible and inspiring Born Standing Up. I recommend it.) By the time I got home, I had to lie down (bringing the CD book into the camper, of course.)

I have learned a few things from my delirium:

1. I have toxic sludge in my brain that tells me I can't do anything and am a total waste of space and an irredeemable fuckup. Fighting against this constantly with a mixture of busyness, kinder self-talk, disgust for such ridiculous self-indulgence, and a sense of humor takes considerable energy and fortitude.
   
2. Getting out of the house and seeing people and doing things are good things to help battle against the Toxic Sludge Monsters.
3. Toxic Sludge Monsters seem to feed on my physical pain. Or else, being in pain seems to travel to all my other deeper roots of (emotional) pain and then I'm one hysterical crazysickperson.
4. It is possible to cough so much you throw up.

A friend of mine, the delightful Jane D., has given me an assignment to write about camper-life. I am honor-bound to fulfill assignments (e.g., I've only ever been good at school and have fucked up everything else was an important refrain of the TSMs) so expect some description of my environment. I am also giving myself some space from the novel right now and am going back to finish a project that was and is very important to me that I had to put on hold to finish the dissertation.

But now I'm tired and have to go do something else -- like lie down.