2003-11-22 - 10:06 a.m.

still battling jetlag, nerves, and the plague

OK. OK. I'm awake. It's a Saturday morning and time for another rehearsal. Also time for another large pot of echinacea, goldenseal, astragalus, peppermint, lemon cold-care tea concoction (ugh) to heal my poor aching throat. I don't think I can remember waking up feeling healthy anymore. Depressing, indeed, and on top of this November has served up the best of the worst of its weather. A big grey nothing outside. sigh.

I've just popped a Tony Bennett CD into my player and am playing it loudly, so that I can ignore my ever-so-irritating upstairs neighbor who somehow thinks that he has full rights to come down and sit on my terrace...and it has worked - he just got up and left - and Mizzy, formerly startled by the loud loaf from upstairs, has relaxed and returned to her favorite positioon curled up and purring on top of my left arm. Her big black blob of rumbling furr somehow hinders typing, but least her conditional love is something warm and positive at the moment.

Feeling rather low these days. I wonder if that is a natural reaction to being constantly sick, and having to face Change.

The choir doesn't feel like "my" choir anymore. I feel somehow detached from them, like I am just watching the rehearsals go by and not really participating. Personal habits that were once charming now seem somehow irritating. The many rehearsals have transformed from a relaxing pleasure into a time demand - when I wish impatiently that we could sing something new and different.

K and I have been bickering constantly at each other all this week, and I can't exactly place the cause of it. The climax was yesterday evening - over something as trivial as ordering the proper shipping boxes. He was trying to help me and seemed very irritated by the whole process. He made a comment like, "It's me, helping you again." It made me feel terribly small - and as if I were a tremendous burden. And therefore it made me very angry. If it is so unpleasant to help me, then just let me do it myself.

The thing is, whatever problems have come up before, K and I NEVER bicker at each other, so this all feels terribly unsettling and new to me. Maybe this is just stress. Maybe just that we are both sick. Maybe it is nerves about the fact that I am moving myself and my cats into his apartment in a few weeks, and I still don't have a firm feeling that he is coming to NY after all. Hmm. Those all seem like plausible causes, eh?

Well, whatever. It's probably best to keep away from him for now. I guess when the blues hit it's just time to sit in the roller coaster and keep rolling until they roll away. This is me rolling my jetlagged body into the shower so that I can make to at least half of a choir rehearsal, and also deal with that little shipping box problem....I can't remember if K ordered the expensive boxes or not....