Jennifer- Day 39 (Or something like that) – Down with the Sickness

For the past five days, I’ve had a fever and cold symptoms and haven’t written anything down because frankly I couldn’t put my thoughts together and didn’t care. Lucia, from the yoga place, invited us to go with her to San Jose to see some of the health food stores there, but we had to decline because we were ill. That sucked a little, but I didn’t really care because I was sick. Now I care though, because I’m starting to feel better. And that sucks too.

Today I told John that we could at least be grateful that we didn’t come down with dengue fever or something like that. We saw the cold coming. And heard it too. People all around us were sniffling and sneezing for about a week and a half before we finally succumbed to it. I was hoping we’d get lucky and just not get sick what with our super-healthy schedule of yoga three to four times a week and running and eating only BioLand products and chicken.

On Monday morning, I woke up feeling so awful that there was no question in my mind about whether or not we were going to dance class that night. I was feverish and achy. We were staying home. So I opened up my computer to email Randall (the dance instructor). He had already sent me an email though that he could make it to our lesson due to a dog bite to the hand. (Poor guy). That made me feel better at least (on an emotional level).

I really hate to miss things or to fail to live up to commitments, even when they’re really unreasonable. So we have about 4 weeks and 5 days left here (or something like that), which seems like no time at all right now, somehow. I’ve been working with my own internal alarm systems regarding regret. They’re currently on the “high sensitivity” setting and I’m trying to work them down to a more manageable level. I have constant alarms going off regarding regret and what I’m missing no matter what I’m doing. I could be at an orphanage in Costa Rica playing with kids thinking that I should instead be rapelling off the side of a volcano or bungee jumping from a rickety bridge into a canyon. Or I could be jumping from the rickety bridge thinking about how I could have spent time doing something “good”.

I have some obsessive and compulsive attributes, it’s true. I like to believe that I’m a very calm and peaceful and that I have my poop in a group, but I think in reality that my phobias and mental problems are just of the socially acceptable variety. Getting the cold slowed me down a little bit and I needed that somewhat. I almost always come out of a good cold with a better sense of what I’d like to be doing and a more reasonable pace. I always wonder what would happen if I just kept the reasonable pace and didn’t speed up or get distracted by stuff that doesn’t really matter.

I guess I’ll try to maintain my serenity and give it another try and perhaps someday, I’ll find out.