BWE 4 & 5: plague weather

It’s Thursday night. I am exhausted from school and work.

My allergies are terrorizing me. I suspect I have swine flu.

My eye is red and throbbing. I suspect I have pink eye.

I open my apartment and immediately sense that the dog messed his kennel. Crap.

I stand there and just look at the books, legal pads, and clothes that are strewn about the room.

The pile of dishes in the kitchen creaks.
The kennel smell is only getting worse.
This is a disaster.

The dog is glaring at me now, but I am still standing there.

I look down and see a piece of paper that had been slid under my door: “Hi this is the building manager and landlord writing to tell you that we were in your apartment today to check if there were any leaks in the bathroom or kitchen.”

My humiliation was complete.

I’ve had a rough two weeks, and that was definitely the low point.

I spent the rest of the weekend working and slowly piecing my apartment together again, but I am still convinced that the next time my landlord sees me he’s going to point and scream “SLOOOB! PIGGY PIGGY PIGGY! SUWEEEE! SUWEEE!”

What made weeks 4 and 5 so bad? School work? Plague weather? Illness?

I want to blame it on all of those reasons, but the real cause of Thursday’s hot-mess-moment was that I failed to follow my own advice and forgot about my non-negotiables: I didn’t eat right, sleep enough, or focus on my goals.

Hence the disaster.

Although school work, plague weather, and illness didn’t help:

The increase in school work was primarily due to moot court because legal research is one of those endless time-sucks where you can “always do more” and I was bad about cutting myself off.

The increase in school work coincided with a week of plague weather: 40 degrees, wet, and gross. And there was this ever-present drizzle that was too light to warrant an umbrella, but quick enough to soak. Fail.

The cold meant that I had to skip to the downtown Target to buy gloves. This was the view from the Macy’s skyway:

And I certainly felt like I had the plague because, my allergies were so bad that I was convinced that I was convinced that I had swine flu. People are very paranoid about h1n1, and I got the filthiest looks from my classmates when I was trying to control my running nose without being distracting. I’m surprised someone didn’t stand up and should “WHY ARE YOU HERE AT ALL? YOU ARE GOING TO INFECT US ALL!”

Oh, and the eye. My nasty eye irritation was completely my fault. My optometrist never told me that I have to dump my contact fluid every time that I use my contacts.

So…I used the same fluid for about three weeks.

Every one that I have told this to has gasped in horror as if I just realized that an oven is an inappropriate place to let a toddler sleep. Pfft.

Well, I chucked the bacteria-filled contacts and fluid, and my eye is much better. With clear eyes, a clean apartment, fresh diet, and enough sleep, so I begin again.