Malaise'd

I have been super-tired all weekend. I don't know why. My body is sending me the signals of "go back to bed, go sleep, go rest," etc, for no real reason -- I've slept nine hours or more every night since Thursday. Yesterday and today I've been plagued with a persistent, annoying/throbbing headache, as well. Not a horrific headache, mind you, but one that's always there, one that makes it difficult to concentrate on nearly anything for any amount of real time.

The overflow drain situation has apparently been remedied and is no longer a problem; I did a load of laundry this afternoon to test to see if it would kick back up and re-flood again, and it didn't -- the drain remains bone-dry despite a large load of laundry, taking a shower beforehand, and running my dishwasher. My dehumidifier and fan dried out the carpet downstairs, the dehumidifier collecting about 1/4 gallon of water from the air, and everything is back to normal. Strange that it happened on Friday and not today, when the temperature got to nearly sixty outside and much more snow melted off. The grass is visible now in most yards of the neighborhood, though on my side of the street there's still a bunch of snow in the yards due to the sun never really reaching it in its winter arc across the sky.

Daisy thinks that it's possible I'm getting sick (to explain why I'm tired all the time and have a persistent headache). I don't feel sick at all, thankfully; I couldn't really tell you why I'm feeling so out of sorts. It's just a fatigued feeling more than anything else, and I can't really explain it much better than that. I've been off for three days, and I'm off tomorrow as well, and it's still largely unknown why I feel odd. Daisy herself, as you know, was ill all last week, and is just now beginning to fully recover and feel somewhat normal again. She's gone out with friends the past two nights to her favorite clubs in Omaha, so it's clear that she's recovered well.

Next weekend, Daisy will be coming down here -- it's the only weekend for the next month or so that neither of us will have anything to do. I don't collect my students' papers until the 12th, and the two weekends after that are part of Spring Break, which means I will be deeply immersed in grading, studying, and (for fuck's sake) finally doing my taxes. One of my colleagues is celebrating her 50th birthday on Saturday night, and has invited me and Daisy to her party at her home, so we're planning to go to that if at all possible. I'm looking forward to it, actually, if we get to do it -- it means that I'll be able to get out of the house for once and enjoy myself for a little while without having to worry about everything pressing going on in my own life. If we don't get to go -- if the weather's bad or something else happens, then that's fine too. I'll still get some much needed time with my lovely fiancee.

Because I've been feeling "off" all weekend, I've not done a whole lot school-wise; I edited all of my students' workshop copies yesterday in one fell swoop, and found them to be much better overall than I was expecting, which gives me hope that most of my students will do well on this paper when I collect them next week. My headache, however -- in addition to my fatigue -- has prevented me from doing any more reading/studying for comps, something which I wish to rectify tomorrow and read about 200-300 pages to make up for. I should be getting my next set of comps books in the mail tomorrow as well, so I'll be able to dive into them one after another after another until I am too tired or otherwise bored with reading them. I'm actually a bit excited to tackle a fair amount of them; in this batch I've got Bob Hicok, Ben Lerner, and Dean Young to read through. I just ordered a hardcover Eliot collection too, as his collected poems are really hard to find online in PDF, if they're even out there.

Tonight, in the overnight hours, I have some chores to do and errands to run; I have to make a trip to Walmart and to put gas in the car, and I need to write out my bills that I had come in earlier this week (electric and water, respectively). I also have to plug in the humidifier to see if it works once I get ready for bed, which will (hopefully) help my allergies -- I'm convinced that at least some of my tiredness and headache is allergy-related; it may rain tomorrow and/or later this week, so that may be part of it. It's also, again, near sixty today when it's been in the 20s and low 30s at the warmest since the snowstorms last weekend. Perhaps I'll wake up tomorrow morning and not be incredibly congested or coughing like crazy, for once. It's at least worth a shot, I think. I'm trying it with just water (filtered, of course, to get rid of most of the minerals) tonight, but I also purchased a few tiny bottles of essential oils that I can put a few drops of into it as well -- I made sure I purchased the model with which I could do that, because I think ahead like that -- and can spread a nice bit of fresh tangerine scent throughout the basement while I sleep at night.