Huddled in the bed, socks on, big fleecy sweatshirt, flannel jammy pants - warm now under three quilts.
It's cold outside, very cold for New Orleans, a few degrees below freezing and that constitutes emergency weather here. Schools, businesses, government offices, bridges - all closed down due to icy conditions. Honestly, I think we're wimps, but no one here prepares for cold like this and no one knows how to drive in icy conditions, hence an emergency is declared and life grinds to a halt.
I happen anyway to be sick - sore throat, persistent cough, general congestion and ick. Working for a school, I have these two freeze days off, but I should have (though I wouldn't have) taken them as sick days anyway.
The chances of me actually falling asleep anytime tonight are slim to none. First there's the being sick and needing to consciously fight to breathe in and out at regular intervals. Then there's the surprisingly loud nagging pipe-whistle coming from the kitchen tap as the water steadily drips to save the pipes from freezing, screaming simultaneous conflicting threats at me - "You're not dripping a thick enough stream, so your pipes are going to freeze anyway! " and "You know, this is just throwing money down the drain by the gallon, very wasteful and seriously wrong green-wise, you terrible Earth-ruiner, you!"
For some reason I can't even start to explain, a few hours ago I had to go out a de-ice my car windshields, front and back. Maybe it was cabin fever from being cooped up for a day and a half, maybe it was a strange reaction to over the counter meds, but damned if the build-up of sleet and ice on my car just didn't bother the hell out of me. I simply couldn't stand it another minute.
So that was why you could have found me at midnight just past sitting in my car in my driveway, engine on, with the defrosters fore and aft going full blast. It took twenty minutes to soften things up enough from the inside so that I could break ice clumps off from the outside . (I'm a Southerner, dearheart. Of course I don't have an ice scraper.)
I'll admit it here. I'm not bright. This is just the latest evidence of the fact. I do stupid things that any idiot would know to avoid - like going out in sub-freezing weather when I'm ill to defrost a car I don't currently need to use, like buying this albatross of a draft-licious house full of holes, like taking that Christmas trip I really (really really) could not afford (but so very much adored).
The freeze isn't supposed to break until tomorrow, well today now, since it's just a few hours until dawn, and then only for a few hours before freezing again. I'm hoping the weather breaks by Thursday. It's supposed to and I have plans for Thursday.
( Whoa. Weird thought just hit me. It's wee hours Wednesday morning. My personal chronometer just clicked off another year. It's not important or anything. I just have to get used to being a different number of years old. )
On Thursday I have two important appointments. The first is with radiology for another MRI of the compression fracture of my back. The second appointment is with NeuroSurgeon Doc to discuss what the pictures show. Six weeks ago, at my last appointment NS Doc reviewed the two sets of scans of my back. The first one was taken an hour after the accident. The second one was taken just before the appointment, five months later.
The first picture looked ugly. Even my untrained eye could recognize the deformity of the compression fractured vertebra, how squished and misshapen it appeared. To my dismay, the second picture, taken after five months of "healing," looked seriously worse. It seems like the bone just crumbled inward on itself. I was pretty much in a state of shock as NS Doc started explaining the surgical options.
Surgery? More surgery? Oh, come on. I simply cannot have more surgery. No.
So that is why I've decided that Thursday's pictures will be radically better, a miraculous improvement over December's and NS Doc will decide to sheath her scalpel because my piddly little back mischief isn't worth her time. I've called upon the giggling gods to help me out this one time, using the one card they cannot ignore. Yes, yes, in order to enlist the aid of the giggling gods to, for once, save me from mischief, I am playing the birthday card.
Okay, now I'm just raving. I blame the cough syrup. Or the pain killers. Or the sub-freezing temperature. Take your pick.
At any rate, I'm getting up. As pleasantly warm as this quilt cocoon I'm in is, that spigot whistling is driving me crazy(er). I'm going to do violence to something if I don't turn on some music to mask the sound of water wasting down the drain.
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