A sidenote from the padded room

Everything I'd rather not think about seems to start with the letter C today. Granted, I do like to think about myself so maybe not EVERYTHING I'd rather not think about... Just a side note in the story of my life.

To return to the issue of the unholy triad of C's then. Let's begin with what might be the main reason the second two C's appear so horrid to me.

Number one on the shitlist:
Colds
For weeks I've managed to stay healthy. After the possibly worst winter in memory, with close to two months of constant colds, I thought I'd worked out the kinks in my immune system and was getting along fine. I hung out with my best friend, who were coughing her lungs out and doing a very good job of imitating a crow with bronchitis, for a week straight while bathing in semi-cold waters and toughing it out in hard winds on the beach just to get a bit of a tan. It all went well, I didn't catch anything, she survived and I'm pretty sure she's still got both her lungs with her. And my legs got nice and tan.

I also hung out with my dearest aunt... who, it would turn out, was suffering from pneumonia. And at the same time I hung out with my other best friend (yeah, I've got two of those. I'm a Libra so I can't choose :D) while she was coughing more than breathing. And still I stayed healthy.

Now this is where the story takes a somewhat darker turn. These last two weeks I've been hanging around with one of my two best friends again. She's better now but her oldest kid (5 y/o) seems to have caught a slight cold. And of course, every time he sneezes he forgets to cover his mouth and almost infallibly turns his head towards me. Not that he can help it. He's still so young and he's cute as a button. Either way I guess my immune system decided to say: "Y'know what? Screw this, I'm going on a vacation". The result? A sore throat and a head that feels like it's full of wet cotton... the last day at work and only two days before I'm going back to my home (a 6 hour drive southward bound) with two cats and glaring sunlight.

This brings me to the second C on the list:
Cleaning
Since I've been borrowing an apartment for two weeks while working in my little hometown I, naturally, have to clean it up and make sure it's at least as clean as it was before I arrived. I hate cleaning under normal circumstances but now, with a cold and no idea where the laundry room is situated, I feel my motivation hitting an all-time low. And yet, this is one of the few times I actually HAVE to clean today and not procrastinate it until next week. Thankfully I haven't eaten much at home so there's not that many dishes needing to be washed. But the cats have had a time of it shedding hairs all over the curtains.

The third C on the list is something I've been procrastinating for lack of funds. Now that I got a fairly nice salary I decided to deal with it.
Cellphones
My semi-trustworthy Nokia 5500 has been acting up lately (read: the last year or two) and I realised it was time to put it to sleep alongside my quarter-trustworthy Siemens M75 (which was its predecessor). So, with that slightly queasy and yet expectant feeling one gets when planning to spend more money than one'd like to think about I finally made the difficult decision to look for a new one. I found it too... It's pretty and it's made from recycled materials. I've even had the chance to feel it up thanks to there being one of those at the news desk I've been working at. I ordered it today and hopefully I'll get it this week. I'll be spending the next few months in a strange limbo where I erratically swing from euphoric to horribly guilty to slightly relieved and then back again while inserting a series of other emotional rollercoaster ups-and-downs and swirls in between.

I can't help but wonder how long my new cellphone will hold out before it activates its built in suicide gene and flips me off. Long live technology, eh?