Sigh.

Here's what has happened to me this February:

1. I got food poisoning. I always thought that food poisoning was when you ate something and a couple hours later your stomach hurt--you just took some Tums and got over it. I learned that that is not exactly the case after throwing up for five straight hours and being taken the ER. There is nothing quite like vomiting into a plastic bag while a handsome male nurse is pushing drugs through your IV line--and then becoming completely overemotional and crying about how grateful you are for modern medicine. There is also nothing quite like being bedridden for nearly a week while your stomach continues to attempt to empty itself of everything you ingest. Thank you, salmonella.

2. Attempting to get my academic life back on track after missing a week--disastrous. Well, I say disastrous, but in reality that's just the neuroticism acting up. I still feel like I'm behind, but I guess I'm really not.

3. Pax's nine-month doctor's appointment happened. He is HUGE--over 20 pounds and 30" tall. He also eats like a pig, although we're still working on "real" finger food (i.e., not puffs/wheels). The main problem is that Pax loves to shove as much food as possible into his mouth and attempt to swallow without chewing, so everything is a choking hazard. Actually, we spent a lot of time rescuing things from Pax's mouth, food or not... he is really very fond of picking up animal hair and scraps of paper from the floor. He's also starting to look less like a baby and more like a toddler, as evidenced by this photo of my darling son in a bear hoodie:

4. Someone please tell me all of the things ever about Willie Bester. I'm doing my seminar project on him and my research is going too slowly. I have books requested through ILLiad that have somehow vanished from the face of the Earth, and I need those books for the project to be any sort of success. HALP.

5. Doing the student bit with the mother bit is continuing to wear me down to my last bit of sanity. Paxton doesn't think that long-winded scholarly articles on geometry in classical Islamic art are nearly as interesting as I think they are, so I almost never get to actually read what I'm attempting to read on a daily basis. Coupled with an online class that I swear is going to give me an aneurysm by the end of the semester and four summer internship applications that are 50% finished and due by Thursday, I'll be lucky if I'm still alive by spring break... in two weeks.

So, there you have it. That's been my entire month! Hopefully, March will be a bit easier to handle...

I'm sick (again).

I am currently working my way through another round of Mucinex (or I was, until the pharmacy was out of it and I had to get Sudafed instead). I was kind of thinking that I might end up at the doctor's today, but (thankfully) I don't think antibiotics are going to be necessary this time.

My husband came down with a nasty respiratory infection last week, and after three days of taking him to the Minute Clinic/emergency room/doctor's office and forcing him to eat something every once and awhile, I caught it, too. Yesterday was pretty bad, but aside from a scratchy throat and some congestion, I'm feeling much better today.

I woke up yesterday morning with a mouth full of mucus--GROSS. This sparked a day-long jihad against bacteria in the house. Every item of clothing that'd been so much as looked at in the past week got thrown into the laundry. After the clothes, it was the towels. After the towels, I had it in for the bedsheets and the throw blanket on the couch. The germs were not going to have any safe places to thrive, not if I could help it. Re-use of coffee mugs for Theraflu was strictly forbidden--I now have a sink full of mugs to go into the dishwasher. I stationed Kleenex throughout the house and placed my travel bottle of hand sanitizer on the entertainment center. Begone, foul bacteria!

Maybe it's psychosomatic, but I do feel better after all that.

Or maybe it was dinner last night. We went to see Tris' dad and the rest of his family on Saturday, and we all went out to this little podunk diner/bar. I had a bacon cheeseburger, and it was good. Last night found us venturing our bacteria-laden selves out into the snow for Harry Buffalo, where I indulged in a bacon-cheddar bison burger on a wheat bun. It was probably one of the better things I've ever eaten. Then we bought Q-tips and Kleenex and Sudafed at the pharmacy and went home. Our lives are very exciting.

When I'd started getting really scratchy on Saturday night, I'd devoured almost a pint of ice cream somewhere around 10 PM. This doesn't really have anything to do with being pregnant... honestly, I didn't even really want ice cream, I just wanted to eat something cold. Last night, I retrieved what looked like a box of orange creamsicles from our freezer. We'd bought them awhile ago and I'd assumed that there must be a few left in the box, because who leaves an empty box in the freezer?

We do, apparently.

I'm debating whether I should get some popsicles today or not. On one hand, popsicles are delicious and I really would like something cold for my throat (cough drops aren't quite cutting it). On the other hand, then there will be popsicles in my house and I will tempted to eat them all. I don't think my OB would approve of a popsicle-and-Sudafed diet.

Hurry up and wait.

I've known I'm pregnant for an entire week now... and my first prenatal appointment isn't until October 5th. That's 22 days from now. I am not going to make it 22 days. I want my tests done now, because I am a very, very inpatient girl.

That, and I've been taking Mucinex and Tylenol like they're going out of style and eating like crap, so I'm convinced that I'm somehow murdering the kid even though the doctor told me that it'll be okay. Also I had two sips of beer yesterday at Oktoberfest because I missed my Sam Adams and I don't know how anyone could be ever be expected not to drink at all for nine months.

I haven't gone to school since last Wednesday, which is awful. I am skipping my 9:00 AM class right now because I am still a mucus factory, but I am feeling better and so I'll go to my 10:30 class and my 1:00 PM class. My voice is still ten kinds of shot, but I won't have to do much talking (hopefully). Kind of worried about my first philosophy test on Friday, but hopefully I can beg notes off of someone...

I keep making a mental note to call the Clinic a week before my appointment and nonchalantly ask what tests they're doing and if I need to bring anything. My goal is to somehow wheedle my way into a same-day ultrasound (or at least a doppler), because the hubsters took off work and if all he gets to see is some blood tests and me peeing in a cup, he's gonna be pretty disappointed. (Also, if everything goes horribly wrong and I've managed to kill the kid via Mucinex overdose, I am NOT crying alone.)

Seriously, how am I supposed to wait 22 days for this stuff? I'm pregnant now. *stomps foot*

Six days later and I'm already sick.

I've known I'm pregnant for six whole days, and I've already managed to make myself completely miserable.

I could deal with the exhaustion, the water retention, the constant feeling of having pulled some sort of groin muscle, the heartburn and the nausea. Really. It wasn't that bad.

Then the temperature dropped from summer to fall overnight and I woke up with the tell-tale sign of an oncoming sinus infection: wicked post-nasal drip irritating my throat. It had gotten so bad by yesterday evening that I had to take a Tylenol to go to sleep so I wasn't up coughing all night. I woke up this morning with the full-blown infection: stuffy head, runny nose, sore throat, raspy cough.

The pregnancy bible--What to Except When You're Expecting, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel--tells me that pregnant women get sinusitis all the time because the hormones make your mucus membranes swell up and get germy. Then they mention that untreated sinus infections can last for weeks. My sinus infections last for weeks anyway.

So, I guess I should maybe call my doctor today. Get some baby-safe antibiotics, that sort of thing. Nasty decaf tea with honey (the only thing I've been drinking for 24 hours) isn't cutting it. I can't take a sinus infection of top of everything else. Now I'm not sure if I'm queasy because of the five-week-old mooch living in my belly or because there are fifteen colonies of mucus living in lungs. At least the kid had the good sense to tone down the cramp-like pulled muscle feeling today.

That's it. Doctor's office, here I come. If I can't get into my doctor, I'll go see my husband's doctor (I swear that man never has any patients, my husband always gets a same-day appointment), if I can't see my husband's doctor, I will waiting in line at the CVS cheapo clinic for two hours (like the last time I had a sinus infection and couldn't get to my doctor, actually).

*cough, cough, hack*

Update, 8:00 PM:

I ended up seeing an associate of my doctor. She was a very nice lady who looked about my age. Anyway, she didn't think I needed antibiotics and recommended treating the symptoms instead of going after the infection because I hadn't been sick very long. She recommended Mucinex and told me I got get the original, D or DM. I went for Mucinex D, because it has pseudoephedrine and I have a desire to hit my sinuses with the strongest thing possible.

You can't just waltz into a drugstore anymore and buy pseudoephedrine, of course. So I take the little card, walk up to the pharmacy counter, and hand my driver's license to the pharmacist in order to prove that I'm old enough to buy the stuff. Only, the pharmacist has some vision problems, and so I ended up reading all the information off of my license to him and waiting for him to put it in the computer.

This would not have been a big deal if I had a) not been dressed like a sick, miserable hobo and b) been able to speak like a human being. Although the doctor didn't find a mucus coating in my throat, she did say that it was red and irritated, which is why it feels so sore and why it hurts to talk. I sound like vaguely like a bullfrog, and the pharmacist kept asking me to repeat things because he couldn't understand me. Like this:

Him: What's your date of birth?
Me: Oh-four-oh-two-nineteen-eighty-six.
Him: Ninety-six?
Me: What? No. EIghty-six.
Him: Okay.
Me: Dude, I couldn't have even driven here if I was fourteen.
Him: Right.

This would have been slightly embarrassing but bearable if it hadn't been for my outfit. I don't bother with dressing myself or doing my hair and face when I'm sick. Any other time, I make myself presentable, even if I'm running late and only have time for some powder and mascara, but when I'm sick? Forget it.

I was wearing sneakers... okay, I'm pregnant and my feet are all swollen, so I've been wearing sneakers for the past week. Fine, sneakers, even though I hate people who wear sneakers when they aren't exercising. But I was also wearing extra-long yoga pants (the loose kind, not butt-huggers) and an oversize hoodie. Not just any oversize hoodie, either: it's from my high school, and it's about two-and-half sizes too big for me. Very good for curling up on the couch with a hot drink, not so good for going out in public when you graduated from high school six years ago. Also, I'd done nothing with my hair. Literally. I have a lot of hair, almost three feet. I'd left it down all day, so it'd gone totally limp and lifeless.

Let's recap: sick pregnant lady, too-big high school hoodie, droopy long yoga pants, sneakers, no makeup, stringy lifeless hair. I looked like a homeless person.

And I had to recite all of my personal information in a frog-voice.

...I'm taking my Mucinex and going to bed now.