tea berry-blue

I went to bed a little after 12:30 last night. I was home sick from work, and I usually go to bed at 1, but I wanted to get a little extra sleep.

Every time I start to doze off, my coughing wakes me up. If I stand up and walk around, I stop coughing quite so much, but that doesn't help with sleeping, for obvious reasons, as I am not a practiced somnambulist.

I am exhausted. My eyes hurt. I am dehydrated like crazy and can't drink enough to put that back into balance. I think I need to go get some water with electrolytes.

I'm making myself soup because I don't know what else to do. I'm already taking allergy meds, nasal steroids, cough syrup (which usually knocks me out cold), naproxen sodium, my inhaler, and chloroseptic. I got up at about 5 and took a quick shower, hoping the vapor would help. I've got vapor rub on my chest.

The more I cough, and the more tired I get, the weaker I get, and the worse the coughing gets.

None of the usual tricks are working. I'm not really sure what else to try. All I know is that I really, really want to sleep, want to stop coughing, have been to two doctors who have basically said I'm doing everything right and there's not really anything else to do.

I just emailed my boss and told him I probably shouldn't come to work today, but part of me is like, ugh, I can't sleep, I might as well be productive. I might try to do some work now, but I really don't want to fuck up my sleep schedule.

Hate, hate hate. I've been up till three or four coughing before, but I've never had it this bad.

This thing happened a few days ago.

You see, I have been at my job for four and a half years, and in that time, I have been disappointed that there is no butter at lunch.

There is butter in the morning, in big tubs, that you can spread on your toast or bagel or whatnot. I appreciate the bit where it is conserving waste to have butter in big tubs, but I do not appreciate the inability of grown adults to keep crumbs and/or jelly and/or peanut butter out of the butter.

But at lunch, the tubs are gone. I have often lamented the lack of butter on baked potato days, and occasionally at other times, when I am eating something that would be nice with a little additional butter.

I have even thought about writing a letter to the cafeteria, but they still have not implemented my suggestions from my last letter, where I asked if we could get wraps with sticky rice, spinach, peanuts and satay sauce as a lunch option. (I just really like wraps with sticky rice in them). I sent that back in 2009 and they replied in the affirmative and said they would add it to the rotating menu, but it never happened.

Anyway, I've always been perplexed by this lack of butter available at lunch.

Until this week.

When I found out where they kept the butter.

At lunch, they have your typical foil-wrapped pats of butter. I was, I must confess, looking for cheese. They usually have shredded parmesan out with the salad bar condiments, and I wanted to put some in my corn chowder (because that would be delicious). But I couldn't find it. In peering around, I discovered that, in the small refrigerator where they keep the yogurt, was a basket of butter pats.

BUTTER PATS.

So I put three (this is important later) in my pocket and joyously purchased my soup, intending to butter my soup.

BUTTER MY SOUP.

I went upstairs, and put two pats of butter in my soup. I frowned, thinking that I had put three pats of butter in my pocket, but when I fished around, I couldn't find any more.

I had delicious buttered soup.

Then, a couple of hours later, I went to the ladies' room.

And on my walk over, I put my hand in my pocket.

And also into a squooshy lump of melted butter.

I don't know if I was just that un-thorough about my search for the last pat, or if it had dematerialized and re-materialized just to taunt me, but suddenly I had a hand full of delicious butter.

Which I licked off, like all good people should.

Anyway, that is my butter story. The renewed commitment to unfucking my lifestyle is working well: I actually managed to leave the distillery at 10, and that was with all my work done, after pausing for a visit, and after having some delicious dinner. Dave has an intern! Who makes Irish stew! And Dave made some glorious fried potatoes, so good.

I got home, watched an episode of Mad Men (I was three behind, so now I am two behind), and spent the last half-hour of the night cleaning out my drawers and forcing a massive purge. I made myself a rule that if the drawer didn't close, I had to get rid of stuff, and that worked well. I got through two drawers, tee shirts and pajamas. I realized that I pretty much never get rid of pajamas. I actually have pajamas that are more than ten years old. Which is great, except people keep buying or giving me new ones or I keep getting ones free from work. I just...I don't think I've ever actually purchased pajamas for myself. Except now that I say that, I can remember doing it. Let me amend: the last time I purchased pajamas for myself was in 2003. And I never wear them! I mostly sleep in just panties, or naked! So it seems silly to waste all that space with jammies.

I do sometimes wear pajamas around the apartment when I'm cleaning, and when I have guests or am a guest, so I did keep some. But I put a lot in the giveaways. And now the drawer closes.

I went to bed, set my new sleep cycle thingybob, and fell to sleep. I woke up WITHOUT the sleep cycle thingybob a full hour early. And felt fully awake and ready to get up. So I did my bottoms drawer, and then I cleaned out the baskets where I keep hair supplies, and re-organized them. And then got showered and dressed and went to work.

The UFYH philosophy suggests making your bed every morning. I keep forgetting to do that, but it is definitely helping me get through a bunch of tasks that definitely needed to be done.

Yay!