Winter's Toll

As the buds break and spring slips soggily over the landscape this year, I looked back over the past month and tried to figure out just what the hell happened. I feel like I've been disconnected from just about everything; this blog is the least of things I've let slip. There's no big mystery, really, it's just that I had the end-of-winter brush with sickness. It wasn't all mine, but around casa Scriptking, when one member is down, you can't help but feel it.

Being sick is a funny thing, and it affects everyone a bit differently. Let's be clear, though, I'm talking about lowercase s sickness. Nothing serious, just pernicious. It's amazing how annoying a cold can be. A stomach virus can cast a long shadow. When you have four people living under the same roof, and two types of sick, the combinations are seemingly endless. For most of the month I managed to avoid the stuff myself, which is amazing considering I had been puked on, snotted on, and someone actually sneezed into my open mouth. The moment everyone else became ambulatory, it finally caught up with me.

But, like I said, it's only a cold, or a little extra toilet-time. I feel like a world-champ puss to complain about any of it, but still, it's the collateral effects that catch up with you. First, there's the tunnel vision. When a loved one is ill, you focus on their well-being, and all extraneous thought gets pushed into the background. Second, there's the time-suck factor. I lost count of how many times I had to visit the CVS over the past couple of weeks. Third, there's the total loss of discretionary time, which is a result of the time-suck factor. If I'm spending all that time at the CVS, that's minutes adding up to hours I don't have available to be working, relaxing, or just being human. Hence, the blog lies fallow. I'm not even going to mention the script I should be re-writing.

Weirdly, and probably because I've been watching a documentary about the space program, having a house of sick people reminds me of the process of re-entry into earth atmosphere from space. You lose communication for a time, and everything extraneous gets burned away.

Even though I acknowledge I don't have much to complain about, because everyone is relatively healthy now, it got me to thinking about how it must be for people struggling with chronic illnesses. The way I felt for the last month simply never ends for them. I really need to be more compassionate.

Having the kind of month I did also made me look back over the winter and realize that the toll for passing to the other end of the seasons was more brutal this year than last: one of my best friends died, other good friends lost a daughter, another friend suffered a near-fatal stroke. The economy isn't pinching Charon's purse at all.

I'm looking for the sun, and the warmth. I need a recharge.