Yesterday, I made it through the work day with mostly a blank stare and mercifully stuffed ears so I didn’t start screaming at the blathering from the other side of the cube wall. As I was walking out of the office, I decided that if I still felt shitty the next day, I would stay home, as I have a ton of sick time left that’s going to be lost in two weeks, so might as well use it if I’m actually sick. When I got home, we had a feeble half-hearted discussion about what to have for dinner, which came down to the fact that I didn’t want to cook or otherwise move my ass from the sofa and I certainly didn’t want to have to get back in the car for take out.
Esteban then suggested delivery, but in Green Bay, the only thing you can get delivered to your door are fake pizzas (Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, etc) or really bad Chinese with disturbing nuclear yellow fried rice. I mentioned that I was interested in the pizza from our favorite little joint downtown but they didn’t deliver. Esteban suggested that we just fend for ourselves, but then I shrugged and said that I didn’t even care enough to figure out what to eat, so I’d just have tea and maybe toast later.
This apparently activated Esteban’s codependency and he called the little pizza joint, grumbling ‘Fine! I will go get your pizza! Twist my arm!’ As mentioned in the last entry, I have miles to go before I have to worry about starving to death, but I’m also not going look a gift mushroom and cheese pizza in the mouth.
So we had pizza and watched ‘Shaun of the Dead’, a gift from the Netflix gods. I love it when my DVDs get there on Mondays, because they’ll always send the thing that is going to be released on the next day.
‘Shaun of the Dead’ is very funny, by the way, and we enjoyed it very much. Although one part, really gross, but we had finished eating by then, so all was well.
Also, during the day, Esteban had gone to the Man Mall, which is what we call this giant orange local store, which is an amalgamation of a Walmart, a sporting goods store, a Home Depot, and a farm implement store. The spaces in the parking lot are extra wide to accommodate pickup trucks. It’s where the farmers go to buy’ um, everything. In fact, we used to have a joke, said in a very thick Wisconsin accent, that if you can’t find it at da Fleet Farm, den you don’t need it, eh.
I sort of love the store myself because I’m always entertained by the possible combinations of merchandise. You can buy a rifle, paneling, horse inoculations, a pinball machine, curtains, and a nightgown! A dresser, a cross bow, a deep fat fryer, and chocolate chip cookies! As you can well imagine, it’s low on style but high on pragmatism, so if you need long underwear (or a duck decoy), you go to the Man Mall. Because Esteban’s first answer to anything is to whip out his credit card, when he needed to clear the 8 inches of snow from our driveway, there was only one logical place to look for gloves and a hat, and it was not in our bedroom, inside the bag hanging from the hat rack.
He decided that the knit hat he bought was subpar compared to the giant furred earflap hat that I bought him one year as a joke (but which turned out to be really warm and useful for snowblowing) but he did find a really nice pair of serious cold-weather gloves. He also had thought about how I prefer thermal socks instead of slippers in the winter, but have rejected recent acquisitions as ‘too scratchy’ and ‘too sweaty’ and have been wearing the same ten-year-old socks which have holes in them (but oh so heavenly soft and warm). So he scoured the thermal sock aisle’yes, that’s right, an entire aisle devoted to thermal socks’until he found a likely pair. Snowy white, mostly cotton, with just a touch of thinsulate for warmth.
Sometimes, I am skeptical of change, so when he handed them to me and I pulled one holey threadbare mansock off my foot to compare, I was prepared to declare them unfit for my princess feet. However, when I stuck my hand inside the first one, it was like a warm soft cloud of white. It reminded me of my very favorite pair of cashmere socks that are always in the wash because they are first in rotation and thus end up on the bottom of the hamper.
I put the one on my bare foot and waited to see if it would be too warm, but it caressed my foot, brought it to the perfect temperature and then maintained it. ‘Ooooooo!’ I quickly whipped off the holey old lumberjack sock to replace it with the new pretty warm socks. I kept them on the rest of the night and then changed to my pajamas but put the socks back on and went to sleep.
I woke up about four times through the night because my throat hurt, then finally at 4 am, I got up, sent the ‘I’m Sick’ email to my coworkers and boss, took a slug off the Ny-Quil bottle and went back to sleep. The cat and I woke up at 10 and I wandered into the living room (the cat decided to conserve her energy), where Esteban was hard at work. I volleyed some freelance emails around and had received the final piece of that project, so I was able to get it turned in, so the day was not entirely a loss. Then I felt exhausted, so went back into the bedroom and watched The Amazing Race, where I cannot believe how Hair Plugs continues to prove himself to be more and more of an asshat.
I did venture out midday to mail the things that I was supposed to mail earlier in the week (but didn’t because I was sick). Of course, now they’re not going to get there before Christmas, mostly because I was unwilling to spend twice a package’s worth just to mail it. Of course, it might have been because I went to a UPS store rather than go to the USPS, as I just didn’t want to deal with boxing them up myself. Lazy, I know. But sick! Sore throat and grumpy! It was the best for all involved, really. Also, almost unbelievably, it was something like negative three degrees outside, but with the new car starter thing, the cold weather has become much more bearable.
However, it also might have been because I still had my magical socks on, even though it was really hard to cram my shoes over them. They are now my source of all happiness. I’ll probably take them off tonight, as I draw the line at 24 hours in the same pair of socks.
Probably.
