If you’re a regular visitor you may have noticed how few times I’ve managed to post this month. It’s because I’ve been feeling “Under the Weather,” both figuratively and literally, most of the month.
As if all the Trumpery wasn’t depressing enough, I managed to contract a serious cold/flu/virus/sinus infection that was bad enough that I actually went to the doctor for Prednisone and Antibiotics after I failed to improve after five miserable days. The Prednisone definitely offered some relief but the antibiotics apparently did nothing except upset my stomach for a week and a half. I still managed to get to the gym half the time or take a half hour walk, but other days I did little more than get up and take a shower. The last couple of weeks have definitely been better and I haven’t had to take pain medication or antihistamines, but I haven’t felt up to doing very much. I managed to recover just enough to get the colonoscopy that I’ve been putting off for over a year. Ironic that I should have to fast for a day just as I was feeling better. The results of the colonoscopy were positive, though, and I continue to improve slowly. I suppose I could feel sorry for myself, but I prefer to see it as a reminder of how lucky I am to feel as good as I do most of the time.
If the illness wasn’t bad enough, I’ve only managed to get out birding three times in the last month because of the constant rain. Most of the days were heavily overcast and the pictures I did manage to take were so uninspiring that I didn’t even bother to download them to my computer. March has continued the wet winter we’ve endured here in the Pacific Northwest, one of the wettest winters on record. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t felt so bad that I would have loaded up the camper and headed south for a week or so. I had planned on getting to Arizona during the Mariner’s spring training, but I wasn’t up to driving so those plans never materialized.
So what do you do when you’re too sick to go out in the rain and take pictures of birds that aren’t there? If you’re me, you turn on the Windows side of your computer and replay Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game that takes so long to complete that I’ve never managed to complete it before turning back toward the light and rediscovering reality. This time, though, just glancing at the constant requests for money to fight Trumpery and reading 45’s Tweets have made living in that imaginary world far preferable to Reality. I’m not sure that even completely recovering from this sinus infection will make me want to return to that Reality.
As I struggle to return to normal, I’ve started unsubscribing from many of my liberal feeds firmly believing it’s too early in the election cycle to fixate on things I can’t change. I’ve renewed my lapsed membership in the ACLU, renewed my membership in the Sierra Club and The Environmental Defense Fund, and will renew several other memberships as they come due. I am too habituated to reading the news to totally ignore it, but I don’t want to obsess on things I can’t control.
I’m sure the political stress I was feeling played a part in my catching the flu/cold/virus that I contracted and made it harder to overcome it. Life is too short and time is too precious to waste it worrying about things I can’t control rather focusing on the natural beauty that inspires me.