The Post Before the Posts

I didn't mean to disappear for almost a month. Honest.

I thought that life might slow down a bit once the wedding was over, and in some ways it has. But in mostly every way, life is still life. And it keeps on happening.

Friends have babies.

Loved ones die.

Your husband is grouchy one evening and says he doesn't feel well, shivering by the time you go to bed, and unable to get out of bed or speak in the morning. It's the flu. The actual flu. The lingering flu that takes something like 14 days to fully get out of your system.

So you spend the weekend caring for him. And on Saturday evening you're not feeling so peachy yourself, so you cancel all plans and sleep something like 14 hours, and by Monday you're okay-ish, and grateful that the flu didn't hit you like it hit him, and you carry on with your week, and push through the sniffles and scratchy throat because you can.

And you go to the spa because you have friends that are awesome like that, and you breathe more deeply, and your tight shoulders unwind, and you laugh and wish you could slow down the afternoon sun just a little bit.

Then Sunday comes around again, and in the afternoon your throat starts feeling more than just scratchy and you're grouchy and by the evening you're lying in bed shivering, and in the morning you're unable to get out of bed or say much at all. And your man is a true partner, caring for you well, and the next morning, after lying in bed for two hours, you wake him up to text him that your throat is so painful you cannot swallow, and will he take you to the walk-in that opens at 8am, because you can't handle this, and you're far too weak to walk the 3 blocks on your own?

And of course he does, and you lie on that little table/bed and wait for a doctor, who takes one look at your throat and prescribes meds, and you're so grateful you might cry, because you briefly wished for death the night before, at the same time that you were filled with the realization that people all around the world and even in the country next door suffer like this because they don't have access to universal health care, or they go through real life-threatening illness, and you are really not that bad off, but at the same time, two more hours of tear-inducing swallows seems unbearable.

So you start the meds, and the next day you start having coherent thoughts, and two days later you finally have enough energy to sit with a laptop, and you realize that it's been almost a month (!) since you posted, and frig, has that month been busy, and you're barely a week out from your sister-friend-former-roommate's wedding, and then it's the end of February, and then, please God, it's springtime, and the world will seem a bit brighter and you'll trek through rain and look for green and start final papers and exams and this whole year has been a blast and a blur and, and, and...

And today is today and here you are.
And you remember that you need to breathe.
And be present.
And let tomorrow worry about itself, because today has troubles enough of its own.
And thankfully, those troubles are few: an application to finish. A meeting to attend. A dishwasher to unload.
And they aren't really troubles at all.