Fever Dreams are Made of These

At home, I was always really strict about my bedtime - no matter what I was doing, I was in the shower before 10:48PM and I was in bed watching The Daily Show at 11:ooPM, and usually I was asleep by 11:30PM. I usually woke up at about 6:30PM, so I generally got 7 hours of sleep, give or take. On the weekends, I guess I would sleep a little more, but I never really kept track.

When I came here, I decided to shift everything back two hours - in bed by 1AM, wake up by 8:30AM, etc., still getting seven hours of sleep. But on the weekends here, I was only getting six to seven hours of sleep, which I guess I didn't really notice was significantly less than I got at home.

In either case, my point is this: I've been overexerting myself at college just a little bit so far and it got me a little bit sick.

On Wednesday night, I started to get a bit of a sore/dry throat. It's hard to describe it... but basically, my throat just becomes dry constantly, and then when I swallow it would become painful. I mean, this isn't really anything to deal with, and if it were all there was I wouldn't complain or even talk about it. The only reason I note it is because it essentially always portends of far worse things to come for my body. So at home I usually take some Echenacea and Goldenrod [placebos that I <3], but here, there is no such comfort. So I just had to live with it.

The next I woke up and the dry throat thing was still going on, and I realized I had a stuffy nostril - meaning I would have a stuffy nose that day. This was Thursday. I remember going to class and sniffling the WHOLE time through Dobrushkin's lecture and wanting to kill myself because I knew I was being "That Kid" who was sniffling the whole damn time in the back of the room... but there really wasn't anything I could do!

Anyway, after class, this guy named Paul stopped to talk to me. He's a sophomore, and he was talking to me about a really strange percussionist who I should listen to/probably like, because he would lay over polyrhythms and flams and crazy time signatures, etc. He seemed really nice and easy to talk to, and hopefully I'll see him in class/around. He rides his bike a lot.
Anyway, the point is, I ended up doing my work in the BH lobby. When I do my math work, I lean over my paper just a little bit - as I'm sure anyone does. But when you have a stuffy nose... this becomes a problem. So I sat there doing work for probably 20-30 minutes, and then started to sniffle an uncontrollable amount, and knew I needed to stop. But I was in the damn engineering building, and where am I going to find tissues there???? Thank god, it turns out there's a "Cart" [food cart] there ["Carts" is a scammy part of Food@Brown] and they had napkins. So I walked over and I got a napkin and I blew my nose.

Holy.

Crap.

I never knew so much stuff could fit in my nose. I used one napkin to blow my nose, and with the next four napkins I cleaned up my face. It was gross and I have no idea how it happened. Yes, I know, it's messed up and wrong. And people kept looking at me and I was like, "Noooo, stop judging me, I'm sick!!!!" But whatever.

Over the course of the next 70 minutes, the same thing happened about three times. The Cart worker changed and they thought I was crazy.

Well anyway, I took it easy that day, did some work, a lot of Math 17, I think - it was a hard problem set and there were some problems I couldn't solve. I worked on one problem for about an hour before I got on AIM/talked to Gina/went to bed. I think it was about 11:15 when I started to get ready for bed, which is like two hours early for my schedule here. I think I got in bed around 11:45, knowing, oh god, I'm going to have to do the sit-up-in-bed-so-you-can-breathe thing. So I did that, and it was going okay - my nostrils were clearing - but I was like... I'm not falling asleep like this. So I had to lay down, and I thought, well, one of my nostrils will stay unclogged, right?

Wrong. Left nostril facing the ceiling, somehow blocked. So I had to breathe through my mouth for a while - not a problem, though, because Danny wasn't in the room so I wasn't annoying anyone. I think I sat there trying to fall asleep like this for about 30-40 minutes. Then down the hallway, I hear... ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da ... and it's a drunken a capella group singing Sweet Dreams are Made of These to welcome their new member, Kayla, the songwriter next door.

Noooooooo, I thought! I was actually, honestly really excited for Kayla and really hoping she would make it and was like WAITING for her to get the phone call so I could be there for her big moment, but it happened while I was sitting there mouth breathing nostril-stuffied and like, dying. And I felt like a bad friend because I wasn't there for her big moment, but like... I couldn't go. I apologized for it later, and I guess she understood? Ah well.

In either case, after that I just laid on my side trying to go to sleep. But I was having fever dreams. While awake. And everything became math. Piano, Gina, songs, college, life, school, everything was math. I tried to meditate and it became math. I tried to sleep, and it became the result of an integration. I couldn't stand it.

Also, I tried to go to the bathroom at 2AM, but tried to keep my eyes closed... and I hit the bathroom door with my head. And scared Morgan, who doesn't like me. Oh well.

Peace out!