Sighiaitus

For someone who talks a lot of shit and says she hates a lot of stuff, I’m honestly not in a bad mood very often and truly bad days are even fewer and further between. However, when they do strike, it’s like twenty-four hours of that split second when you’ve already pulled your front door shut enough to know it’s locked behind you, but you’ve got a brilliant mental picture of your keys sitting on your dresser instead of in your pocket. Bad days are bad not because of the stuff that happens; they’re bad because better alternatives are painfully obvious.

And then sometimes, like leap years or Haley's comet or decent Weezer albums, a bad day stretches into a tragically bad week, or ten days, or however long I've been getting a professional wrestling-style dramatic beatdown from the universe at large. I did one pretty regrettable personal thing. Then I did one extremely regrettable professional thing. Then I got the typhoid tuberculosis consumption bubonic influenza, which smote me unto bed for more than a week. I was sick. I was talking to myself, cold sweats, body-shaped nest in my bed, too tired to answer the door for delivery, in pain all the way down to my teeth sick. I'm just now kind of feeling better, except that I get more tired than I should doing taxing things like, I don't know, chewing.

There was some other rotten stuff in there too, and sum of these terrible parts amounts to not doing much of anything for the better part of a month besides having that ache in my stomach that means nothing medical beyond, "You're in some shit, lady." December thus far has added up to a pile of used tissues, a flurry of apologetic e-mails, and six thousand utterances of this guttural sigh I didn't know I could sigh.

I'm thinking my run of crap luck is karmic retribution for this small selection of things I did this year that, given the chance, I'd undo. On a scale that runs from Point A: pretending you didn't see the old lady get on the subway so you can keep your seat all the way to Point B: premeditated homicide, I'd say my sins were maybe a 4.6, 4.7. Could have been worse, but I probably deserved the kick in the pants of justice I've received.

In a way, it's good. Yes, I've had a fever for the last 8 nights, but there's something therapeutic about burning off your own germs. I'm hoping the slate is all sponged and paper toweled for the new year. And that my inevitable 2009 fuck ups won't tamper with my immune system or embarrass the ever-loving crap out of Semi-Professional Kathy (career just barely included).