writing from my heart, because i am stuck at home with the flu, i think

yesterday i told jared i had those sharp pains in my inner organs that always precede the stomach flu. he replied that i always claim to have the stomach flu. he was right. but i told him, this time, this time it's for real. those sharp inner organ pains do not lie.

about 11pm the nausea set in and we decided to call it a day and turn out the lights. i laid there and whimpered for an hour because to me, nausea is the absolute worst that my body can experience. give me a head cold for a year over a day with nausea. oh but get this, head cold symptoms were setting in at exactly the same time as my stomach flu symptoms. i finally got my brain to focus on slow, deep breathing enough to fall asleep.

by 6am i was wide awake and dry heaving again. barf-pocalypse hit around 7am and round two around 8am. i forced myself to fall back asleep hoping i wouldn't wake up until that same time the next day when it had all passed. it's a universal law that one can only be nauseous for 24 hours, right? with my head cold symptoms and my barf symptoms, i'm officially diagnosing myself with the actual flu.

isn't this the weirdest time of year to get the flu? or am i wrong? i thought flu season was winter to early spring? either way, the flu does not care what time of year it is, the flu attacks and it attacks hard. so of course i didn't sleep the day through, instead i woke up at 11am, all groggy from oversleeping and feeling just slightly less nauseous but a pounding headache had ensued. i remembered someone said to eat yogurt when you have flu symptoms, so i did and i'm not so sure about it. and for the last two hours i have laid in bed looking at pinterest and ignoring the stack of textbooks burning a hole on the bed next to me. because when you're feeling terrible, do you really have to put your brain through the unpleasant as well? also, jack, our cat, has not seemed to mind or notice that i am sick at all. but i guess that's cat for you. when it comes to being sick in bed, dogs totally win.

so speaking of college, it seems that everybody loves college. and i can sometimes hop on that train, but most of the time it's unpleasant and i wish day in and day out that it was over and that i could be done with it already. and most days i just want to quit. sticking with it for this long has required a good deal of determination that i didn't know i had.

while lying in this bed, looking around at the same objects in my room all day today, and throughout the day most other days, it makes me want to live with less. why do we seem to think we need all this stuff? how does it all accumulate so quickly? i have become acutely aware in recent months how we think we own our possessions, but in reality they own us. i think about this a lot. some objects are exempt from that idea though, those that are both timelessly beautiful and provide a real utilitarian service on a regular basis. for example jared's antique dresser. we bought it two years ago and it has not once come into question as something that really, truly needs to be there. it is beautiful, it has stood the test of time in both style and strength, it durably does it's duty day-in and day-out.

plants. that vintage lamp that always hangs out in our bedroom, no matter which apartment we have. our bed. mirrors. our wool living room rug. the good bowls i bought last week. candles. the items that your eye almost doesn't notice, that you don't seem to hate but you forget to love, the pieces that do their job so well that you forget they are there at all. those are the items worth keeping around.

you can ask my husband, almost every single morning when i am getting dressed, i inevitably find one or two items in my closet with which i can finally part and yank them down off their hangers and toss them from our bedroom to the front door, which is the designated place for items that need to be donated. the above photo is actually a few months old and many of the clothes hanging up are already long out the door.

even though i don't have any energy, the thought of moving my body from a horizontal position makes me sad, and i'm sure my nausea and pounding headache will revive full force, i'm thinking about standing up and parting with about half of the wardrobe i have left. oh and i plan to sip chicken broth and watch amelie.

ciao.