I am not feeling well at all right now. I hope I’m not coming down with something.

For whatever reason, I feel headache-y and dizzy and a little nauseous. And my joints are aching. Sounds like an inflammatory response of some sort to me, but damned if I know what it’s responding to. I don’t think I have been exposed to any novel chemical stimuli today. Maybe it’s just something that has been building up for a while and this is the first time I am consciously noticing it.

That sounds like something that would happen to me.

Oh, and I just noticed that the skin on my hands feels tight and tingly and itchy and sore. So there goes my rarely seen eczema. That usually only comes up when I have handled or been around certain cleaning chemicals, like the ones used in dry-cleaning. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened. But it’s not impossible that someone else in the apartment brought some dry cleaning home.

One thing is clear : something is bugging the hell out of my system. It’s pretty unhappy. It might be that my pores are all clogged. In that case, what I need is a good hot bath to open them up and clean them out.

Having oily skin and big pores can be a bit of a chore sometimes.

It could also be that my body is reacting to the lack of going out into the sunshine and fresh air compared to when I had school every weekday. In that case, the solution is to GTFO of the house, even if all I do is walk around the block or something.

Trying to think of any little chore I need to do that would provide a pretext. I do need to buy Xmas cards, I suppose. I could go to Richmond Centre and see if I could find them there.

Assuming my knee will let me, of course. Sigh. It sucks so much to love mobility just when I was getting to the point where being active didn’t hurt so much.

Stupid torn cartilage.

The reason I think it has something to do with not being outside enough is that I have felt this way before, but… not since I went back to school. So it’s something about the shirt. Not enough exercise, not enough sunshine, not enough fresh air, too much lounging about naked with no clothes to soak up sweat.

Yeah, I have been doing that. But I am going to stop. In fact, I am going to get up and get dressed right now. I bet it will make me feel a lot better.

(—)

And I’m back. Wow, that’s probably the shortest amount of time my little symbol has ever represented.

Can’t say I feel all that different, to be honest. Maybe I should crack a window and air this little box of mine out. Ventilation is always a key factor with me.

I’m so sensitive.

Another clue : something happened to me this morning that hasn’t happened in a while. I woke up, used the bathroom, and then…. just plain could not get back to sleep. And it wasn’t just insomnia. Lying down, I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly. I had to get up and use the computer for a while until this tense, panicky feeling left me. And even then, I couldn’t get to sleep, I just didn’t feel so bad.

Until I got up after a brief doze after lunch, and then I felt like crap again.

Obvious question : was I using my CPAP last night? Answer : I am pretty sure I was. Because putting on or taking off the CPAP mask is something I do in that twilit area between sleep and wakefulness, I can’t ever be totally sure. There have been times when I woke up with the mask off when I was pretty sure I had gone to sleep with it on.

So it’s not impossible that I took it off some time in the night without waking up. That would be messed up, but I can’t rule it out.

Still, the shortness of breath I experienced today is disturbingly familiar. It’s definitely something I remember from my life as a virtual shut-in. So whatever is disturbing my system, I have been here before.

Enough obsessing about my health. Biological update : I have now registered for classes next semester. So I am good and done on that front. God bless and the crick don’t rise.

Registering was a total bitch, as usual. I can’t believe I was looking forward to it. The first three courses I signed up for – two Philosophies and a Creative Writing – went super easy and lulled me into feeling like it wasn’t going to be so bad.

But courses 4 and 5 were a freaking nightmare.

I wanted to get one of my math-y courses done this semester, but that turned out not to be possible. Everything was either full, not offered in Richmond, or would have required me to be at school before noon.

And homey don’t play that.

But that is what happens when you are showing up late to the buffet like I am. I wanted to do it two weeks ago, but I couldn’t because of fees, deposits, etc.

So I had to take what I could get. So many awesome sounding courses just plain not offered in Richmond. And I couldn’t talk myself into taking something at the Surrey campus, even though I totally could.

I am sure the Surrey campus is somewhere near transit.

Oh well, nothing is totally set in stone yet.

So it was a lot of blind alleys eventually leading to me ended up with a Linguistics course (basically Linguistics 101, which should be awesome because I love language) and History of Canada from 1867 to Present, because I was really desperate.

And I am really looking forward to be that smug kind of Canadian who actually knows more Canadian history than American history. When everyone else is in that particularly Canadian moment of awkwardness where you realize that nobody in the conversation knows something they are pretty sure they should know as Canadians but don’t, I will actually know it, and as an act of largess, share it with others as though I am just reminding them of something they totally knew but had forgotten for the moment.

And then I will join in the Canadian tradition of feeling quietly, smugly superior to others.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.