Sick Days

My boss is so awesome

I haven’t been sick with a cold or flu since 2019.

Still a Covid Virgin. Sick just isn’t on my to-do list.

The Monday after our really fantastic Family Folk Machine concert, my husband had a monstrously sore throat, and throughout the day got snifflier and snottier until KABLAM cold.

I did All The Things I usually do to keep myself from getting it. Wim Hof Breathwork, double vitamin C, ginger tea, all the things. And 99.9% of the time that does it. Michael had Covid and I took care of him and didn’t get it. The numerous colds he’s had took one look at me and ran screaming for the hills.

But not this one. It hasn’t been the worst. I’m not mad. But I took a whole week off to recover from the concert and then I got sick on Saturday? Seriously? Ugh! So … I have cancelled all my clients this week and just stayed in the comfy chair devouring the TBR pile. Which has been pretty great because wow did I have a lot of books to get through. Don’t worry, Thriftbooks is sending more (it’s a sickness!!!!!).

But all the things I wanted to do on my week off got a little pushed back because Michael was sick and had moved into the living room so he wouldn’t give me his cold, and the living room is the only place I have to work and record … so … yeah. Okay, no really, it’s okay. I don’t mean to snark. Things happen. There’s a serious design flaw in the way sinuses were engineered (and I would like to speak to the manager about it please) and sometimes these things cannot be helped, and hey, things happen - or not - for a reason.

There’s always a gift.

Messages and signs, well now, I had plenty of those. Skinned knees much? Yeah. Seems like there was some other sign of doom but I can’t remember now. I kept promising … whoever was in charge of that that I was in fact going to take some time off, and had scheduled myself out of the office for two whole weeks! Now, that first week off was lots of last minute stuff for the concert and a little this and some that and less actual rest than I honestly needed. But I took the week off! Ha, yeah.

See, I have a deal with the Universe. A decade or so ago, I was teaching and gigging a lot. A lot. And writing and producing a weekly web radio show about Magick and probably a few other things, and I started having really bad vertigo and falling a lot. One night I was literally lifted off my feet and thrown down the entry stairs of our house, while Michael rushed in from the kitchen in time to see my feet disappear and hear the profanity doppler-effecting away and I sailed through the air. AND crash-landed on my hard-shell guitar case. Busted my glasses, so many bruises and abrasions. So. Many. And my body forgot how to regulate my temperature so I thought I was freezing to death and shivered for two solid hours, which Did. Not. Help. I was released from the ER, spent a week on the couch reading, and went right the fuck back to it.

And a few months later it happened again, and I spent another week on the couch tending my scrapes and my bruises, and reading.

And one day, I thought to myself, Self, I thought, you know, it would make a hell of a lot more sense to plan a week off every quarter and lay on the couch reading and not having to be miserable and in pain.

And then I said to the Universe, Hey, Universe, I said, if I take a week off and do nothing but relax and recharge and do lots of self-care, say every 3 months, will you stop throwing me down stairs and crashing me into sidewalks and similar?

And rays of light came streaming through the cloud cover, angels sang, birds tweeted, and I heard one of my guardian angels muttering, Jesus Christ, it’s about fucking time she figured it out.

So there you have it. I’m taking an extra week off because I promised the Universe I would and I didn’t and now I’m sick. But my skinned knees are almost entirely healed so I got that goin’ for me.

So if you’ll ‘scuse me, I’m going to go back to my comfy chair and my Richard Tarnas book (Cosmos and Psyche) and be a lady of snotty luxury.