Recently I learned that I'm still not well enough to spend a lot of time indoors in public places. I tried taking accounting classes at the university that required ten hours a week of classroom time, and I was sick by spring break. A week off helped, but then things went seriously off the rails with two weeks to finals. I skipped a bunch of classes, studied for three of my four finals, and pulled off three A's and a B. (The B wasn't going to get any better even with a perfect grade on the final, hence the lack of studying. Ok, I studied a little. I didn't want a C.) Here are some crazy things:
- I found out I need bifocals. I'm in my 40's, so that's ok, but I didn't have time to go get new glasses while I was in school. I wore my old glasses to see the board in class, and it turned out I could see my notebook just fine under the edge of them, so ta-da, bifocals. That's a wonderful solution until you have to pass a rule that if you're in the building, you have to wear a respirator. That fills up the space under your glasses, leaving me a tiny hole through which I could see my notebook with one eye at a time. As of Sunday, I am the proud owner of some brand new actual bifocals. And unless I find some other activity that requires distance and close vision close together, I have no real use for them.
- This part has to do with being an eternal optimist, once I got my brain retrained. As you're getting sick, the constant stress on your system can condition your brain into a constant state of fight-or-flight, and you adapt so that you look normal, but you are prone to things like depression and assuming the sky is falling. So, brain retraining, etc., and now I deliberately expect things like being healthy. With that in mind: the week after I had to skip class, I got called for jury duty. So I called up my doctor, who had just seen me the week before, while I was not in such hot shape (but I was feeling better!), to get an excuse. I've done this before, so I was expecting a postcard from the jury office promising to call me when I was better, but instead, I got a permanent excuse. I thought, these things can be permanent? To cement the whole thing, the doctor's office sent me a copy of the form letter, where, under 'when this juror will be able to serve,' the doctor had written 'never.' I thought it was hilarious -- never! Never??? What a grumpy-pants one-word answer! And then I thought, hey, wait a minute.... Um, uh oh?
- The last week of class, a group I'd worked with all semester had to give a final presentation. Weeks before, we'd decided to put our two most confident speakers at the beginning and the end of the talk, and, as the biggest floor-hog, I was selected to wrap things up. We had a good project, a good group, and beautiful slides (thanks to the deliverer of the introduction). I delivered the summation in tasteful business casual wear, complete with heels, with half my face covered by a big blue respirator with purple filter housings. It went fine.
So that's where I've been and some of my adventures. I'm sure there will be more, but part of them will be trying to figure out what to do next, given that I learned that buildings with enclosed corridors (for example, the accounting department) will kill me.
