Checkout

I don't know if it's the weather, or the cough meds, or a weekend of interrupted and/or restless sleep... but all I want to do is put my head down and take a nap.

So briefly, from the foggy haze of exhaustion: good weekend. Decent drive, pretty wedding, fantastic food.

Sat up way too late with KT and Kevin and Karen, playing Cards Against Humanity, then got up way too early and had breakfast with them before coming home. Got the kids, and had a great time with them, too.

This week has no big plans. The Newport News Park Fall Festival is this weekend; I might hit that. I might be going on a date Saturday. Hallowe'en decorations will probably go up, as the kids have been pestering me about them since last week. But other than that? As little as possible.

And hopefully, some naps.

A Mild Suggestion

I went back to the doctor on Tuesday for my cough.

(It's been going on for so long that no fewer than four people in my office stopped by to suggest their own remedies. Zinc and echinacea, fresh juice, tea with honey, vitamin C supplements...)

My doctor said, "There comes a time when we've tried everything else, and we just give up and throw antibiotics at it."

"Good," I said, "because that's what I want."

"Let's see... I can give you Zithromax, which is fairly benign and gentle and usually gets the job done, or Biaxin, pretty much kills everything but the host. I'm thinking we go with door number two."

"Yes. By all means, let's take no chances," I agreed.

"Okay." He started tapping at his Macbook Air, sending a (wireless, electronic) prescription directly to my pharmacy.

"Can we refill the cough syrup, too? Just to keep things even until the antibiotics kick in?"

"Yes, absolutely." He tapped some more. "Now, the Biaxin, you should take with food."

"Will do."

"I'm not kidding. Don't eat dinner and then take it an hour later. Take it with the food."

"Got it."

"No fooling around. And not just a little food. A whole meal. Take the pill, and then dump the food on top of it."

"Take the pill before I eat?"

"Yes. Just before you eat." He tapped at his computer some more, recording notes. "Did I mention you should take it with food?"

"Yes, I got it."

"Really. With food."

"Okay."

He let me go, and I went down the hall, stopping at the desk to turn in my charts. I opened the door out onto the waiting room and the exit, and my doctor came around the corner. "Take it with food!" he yelled. I think he startled some of the waiting patients.

I'm beginning to think he had a message to impart, there. If only I could figure out what it was...

(I took the fourth pill this morning. [With food, yes.] I'm still coughing, but it's already smoothing out and becoming less urgent.)

By the way, no post tomorrow -- I'm taking the day off to drive up to Charlottesville for a friend's wedding and -- not incidentally -- hang out with my other friends who will be attending the wedding. I hope to have pictures and stories on my return, Monday!

Up and Up and Down

Friday was great. I met Elizabeth to go see ParaNorman -- it was really cute and fun, though probably too scary for my kids, so I'm glad I saw it without them -- and then we went to Ichiban for sushi. Mmm, sushi.

As I was leaving -- literally, as I was opening the car door to head home -- my phone rang, and it was Braz, wanting to know what I was doing and if I wanted to hang out and see what he's doing with his place. So I did, and got to meet his new girlfriend in the bargain.

Saturday morning, I put up a border in the dining room for my soon-to-be Mexican theme:

(The lovely thing about a Mexico theme is that, not only do all your colors not have to match, it's actually better if they don't.) I was going to start hanging the art pieces as well, but my stupid cough was getting in the way, and all the dust I was stirring up wasn't making things any easier, so I decided that was enough for one day.

As previously mentioned, I had a date Saturday evening. He turned out to be neither a serial killer nor a creep, and he agreed that contrary to what certain older co-workers of his had feared, I didn't seem to be a psychotic black widow murderess. either. Though, of course, I could just be biding my time. We had a nice dinner, then sat at the Barnes and Noble cafe and talked until the store closed, and then we walked over to Sweet Frog and got yogurt and sat outside and talked some more until it started raining very hard, so we waited for a lull and then called it a night.

Sunday should have been a marvelously lazy day, but instead I woke up in a bit of a funk that I couldn't seem to shake off. I decided to distract myself with a movie, but like an idiot, I put in my waiting Netflix, which was a romantic comedy, exactly the wrong thing for my mood. It's a good thing I have a strict rule against drinking when I'm alone, or the maudlin Twitter posts I made would've been oh dear lord so much worse, or even more horrific, turned into drunken maudlin emails I would have regretted immediately upon hitting Send.

I did manage to mostly pull myself together enough to go out to meet up with the GM of a local RPG I might join. He explained some of the rules of the system to me; it sounds pretty similar to most of the other games I've played, so I don't anticipate a lot of problems getting the hang of it. So I'm going to come up with a few character concepts and shoot them his way, and he's going to juggle schedules to try to get most of the players together for a character creation session sometime in the next few weeks. It sounds like getting the schedules lined up is going to be a real trick, though, so I'm not really holding my breath on this.

So, all in all, I want to say it was a pretty good weekend, but it's hard to do when it ended on a down note. For no apparent reason. Stupid brain.

Sore

Whee, weather changes are fun! In addition to the cough I can't shake, I've now got a post-nasal drop sore throat from the changing weather.

I wonder if that would convince the doctor to just give me some dang antibiotics...

Probably not without a positive strep test, which doesn't seem likely. I'll give it through the weekend, and then call the doctor Monday if I'm still under the weather.

I actually gave up and went home at lunchtime yesterday, took an extra dose of cough syrup, and went to bed for a three-hour nap. I don't know if I actually felt better when I woke up, but at least that was three hours I wasn't coughing.

I foresee a lot of naps this weekend. Yay, naps!

(I'm rambling, aren't I? Sorry about that. I blame the cough syrup.)

Activity!

I am, as they say, keeping busy.

I have an appointment with my therapist today. Those are sometimes painful, occasionally actually fun, and almost always draining.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting Elizabeth for a movie and sushi. There was a Groupon a little while back for a local Japanese restaurant -- $20 for $40 worth of food. Which is a great deal for a restaurant I love eating at... but there's no way I can eat $40 worth of food on my own (especially within the limits of these sorts of coupons, which generally stipulate you have to use them in one visit, and alcohol is not included). So I said something on Twitter about being willing to split it with someone, and Elizabeth took me up on it. So yay, girldate! If we can both get out of work early, we're going to see ParaNorman; if not, we're going to catch Bourne Legacy.

Saturday's project is to start redecorating the dining room. I decided a few weeks back that I was going to gather all my Cancun stuff in there and give the room a Mexico theme. I found a border sticker that's not blatantly Mexican, but has that same sort of bright color going on for it, so that's my step one -- putting that up. Then I'll work on rearranging the artwork.

Saturday night, I have a date. I'm hoping it goes well. Or at least, better than the lunch date I had on Tuesday, with a gentleman who was very nice and ridiculously smart but not a terribly good conversationalist, so there were a lot of awkward silences. (Yes, for my concerned friends, appropriate levels of caution are being taken such as meeting in public places and not giving out more personal information than necessary. And at the other end of the caution scale, yes, I've got condoms. And no, I am not going to blog about their use, or lack thereof.)

Sunday's excitement, beyond the usual chores (whoo! chores!) is a meetup to see about possibly joining a local gaming group for an Ars Magica campaign. It sounds like schedule might be an issue, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

Now, if I can just bludgeon this stupid damn cough out of existence, I'll be ready to take on the world. (Yay, Happy Fun Cough Syrup...)

Queer And Folk

I did some stuff!

I had the kids for the weekend, and on Saturday I took Penny and Alex out shopping. If you didn't see my post about how fantastic Penny was this weekend, check it out, 'cause she is one amazing kid.

Matt picked the kids up on Sunday, and I loaded up my car and headed up to Jenn and Brian's, where I picked up Jenn and we headed off into the sunset, looking for rainbows.

Well, sort of. We drove off into the mountains to attend the Roanoke GLBT Pride festival. (Actually, Jenn drove the whole way, because I spent the whole weekend doped up on Good Cough Syrup. It's kind of a miracle that I made it to her place and then back home on my own.)

We got to the festival around 3:00, and hit the food vendors pretty quickly, because we'd skipped lunch in favor of snacks on the road. I took my hamburger to the condiments table and said something like, "Ooh, I can have onions -- it's not like I'll be kissing anyone today!"

"Don't be too sure of that," said a voice behind me. I looked up, and the guy running the stand grinned at me, leaned across the counter, and puckered up.

Well, what else was I going to do? I kissed him. Laughing, Jenn asked for one, too, and got it.

We wandered around looking at stuff for a bit, but unfortunately, there were about half the vendors I remember from last year, and not nearly as much fun stuff. Jenn bought some hand-spun alpaca wool yarn, and I bought a couple of chainmail bracelets for the kids (really, that was the best I could find for them; it was sad). I looked for Jesse, but didn't spot him.

Even more unfortunately, the sheer number of smokers made the air unbreathable; Jenn's asthma roared into life, so we had to leave after only about an hour, and I did not get any really fabulous pictures of drag queens or outrageous outfits.

From there, we headed further west, to Blacksburg, where we were going to stay with Jenn's Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Dave for the night.

I'm always a little uncertain about meeting people's relatives, especially older ones. The moreso because we were descending on their house. But it turned out to be fine. Better than fine. Fantastic. Aunt Jeanne was gracious and charming and oh my lord funny. She didn't censor herself at all; immediately upon our arrival, she pulled out a bottle of wine and said, "I want to get sloshed and sit up late talking!" And we did (though I only had one glass of wine; I didn't want to have a bad reaction by mixing alcohol with the Good Cough Syrup).

Uncle Dave was quieter, but just as cool. After we'd had dinner, they brought out a Cards Against Humanity deck, and we sat up until eleven or so playing, and they were just as Wrong as anyone else I know, and a good time was had by all. Aunt Jeanne decided that I should be her second-favorite niece, and there was banter about meeting her sons.

We drove home yesterday, and I spent the evening doing the chores I'd neglected over the weekend -- the grocery shopping and the laundry and paying the bills -- and catching up on YouTube.

So all in all, it was a really great couple of days.

Loving Heart

I don't know what, specifically, has gone so right in Penny's upbringing, but there are times when she exhibits a pure, generous nature that's so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes.

Two examples:

Last night, I took Alex upstairs to get ready for bed, and ducked into my room to drop something off and discovered that Penny had made the bed, laid out my pyjamas on the covers, and left three notes, two at the bottom corners of the bed, and one on my pillow. The ones at the bottom of the bed were "coupons" for her to do the dishes and make dinner; the one on my pillow said, "I love you very much, Liz." (Using my name instead of "Mom" because last night she was pretending to be a fairy who had never heard of this "Penny" person I kept referring to.")

And if that wasn't sweet enough, when I went into Alex's room to help him change into his pyjamas, I saw she'd done the same thing for him, though his notes were lined up on his pillow. One read, "I love you very much, Alex," and the other was a coupon for "caring for you more".

How incredibly sweet is that?

And for the second example, I took her to Charming Charlie this morning to use the gift card she'd gotten for her birthday. And to give her some space to look around, I took Alex across the street to Bath and Body Works. We wandered around a while, and I didn't rush things, because Penny often has trouble making up her mind.

When we got back to Charming Charlie, we found Penny at the register, fretting over her purchases. She had, quite naturally, way overspent. She had some of her own money with her, but not enough. The saleslady told me she was up to $90, and she only had a $50 gift card.

"Sorry," I told her. "You're going to have to put some things back." I looked at the array of accessories. "...Why are you buying three watches?"

"I wanted to get one for me and one for you and one for Alex."

Oh. Well. Never mind that I don't wear watches and Alex can't even tell time. She was going to spend some of her own birthday money on presents for me and her brother. I wanted to kiss her right there in the store. I think the saleslady got a little misty.

(As it turned out, once we put the watches she'd picked for Alex and me back, she was less than $5 over her limit, well within her cash budget.)

These are the moments that offer me glimpses into the future, that make me already proud of the lovely, kind-hearted, generous woman she's going to become.