Still with the creeping crud

Last night I couldn’t be bothered to cook dinner because I was too exhausted, achy, short of breath and generally woeful. So I ate a bag of Sun Chips with some hummus. Later in the evening, since it was gaming night and one of my guests was kind enough to bring snacks, I supplemented with several large soft-baked chocolate chip cookies and several more mini brownie bites, plus a cup of tea and a cup of milk with a splash of coffee. I have to say that the one inarguably good thing about feeling under the weather is simultaneously feeling justified eating whatever the hell I want.


Yet somehow I managed to drag my carcass in to work today. The whole notion of “whatever happened to sick days” is something which columnists make much hay of in these crazy post-millennial days, but I think I’ve got a reasonably forthright take on it myself: sometimes they just don’t do any good. I definitely feel off my game right now, and if I felt like one day of staying home from work, lying in bed and recuperating would completely restore me, I would blow the eight hours of personal leave time. In fact, I’ve done exactly that in the not-at-all-distant past of the previous month or so. But I know my body and my health history well enough to recognize what I’m slogging my way through right now, and it’s not something that a day of hooky and lollygagging would much ameliorate. So why bother? I could spend a day at home and resting, and then come back to work tomorrow and still feel pretty run down, or I could suck it up and come into work today feeling run down and also come back tomorrow the same (or slightly improved). Might as well save the leave hours for a time when I actually need them.

Besides, now that I’ve been shuffled off to a cube in an oversized storage closet, me and my miasma of ill health don’t really infringe on anyone else’s space or wellness. So I can still look down my nose at people who come to work when they are hacking up a lung and smuggling enriched Petri dish stock up each nostril and also visit other people’s cubicles, stand over their shoulder, and contaminate the common air. I’m just a sickly lone wolf, I am.