Thoughts

We're home from Pennsic.

I have not had a Pennsic that was so difficult ever, in the 29 years I have been attending. I'd agreed to be a deputy to a department head, who is already overwhelmed with life and on top of that had their son & family coming for a first-ever visit with their grandchild while staying in their camp... and they are the camp master, to add to their stress. They're also a micro-manager who does not believe in training their subordinates and responds to every question or suggestion with a loud and public diatribe about why the speaker is wrong. We bled out volunteers as if we had a cardiac wound. Extensive training-from-below was applied by me, discussions held with their direct superior to reinforce "volunteer management advice" and I bit the inside of my cheek so much I ended up with a cold sore in the raw area.

"How bad was it?" you ask.

I worked 20 hours straight on Landgrab Friday because I was unsuccessful in pinning them down on forming a schedule in advance when only they and I could be in charge of a shift and the department had to be open for 38 hours straight. Then when they came to relieve me so I could finally rest they let me know that they'd need to be relieved soon because they spent their sleep hours working on the infrastructure in their camp and "missed their window for sleeping".

I made it to bed around 5am (was relieved on Saturday at 4am), falling asleep in a closed tent which roasted in 91-degree (f) weather and woke up to heat exhaustion around noon, woozy and weak. Had to phone my husband to come take care of me because I could not stand without aid... he opened up all the sides of the tent for air flow, force fed me water and juice, trained two fans on me, and stayed with me until my temperature went back to normal, then went back to the department we'd been working in to continue the work he'd been doing there since 8am. I saw him again when I returned to the department around six in the evening and we both worked until it closed that night at 10pm.

That was just day One and a half.

We didn't have time to cook any food. Everything was grab-and-go or purchased from a food vendor. We didn't have time to help our camp set up hardly at all, or to assist at tear down. We didn't see a battle, a class, a show, a party, someone else's camp, our friends, or the merchant area except for one hour the day after our department closed down. (I got to see Kendrick which was a treat.) I never set foot in the Cooper's store - I hear that the upgrades are fabulous. I look forward to seeing them next year.

I got heat exhaustion twice. And retained so much water that I had to buy men's extra wide shoes to make it through the second week because I'd damaged one little toe from jamming my feet into shoes that were too tight. We thought I might have broken it. Oh - and had a UTI to boot.

One night I posted something on Facebook about how sad I was that a camp I knew well had six parking tickets (between two couples) and that meant that they'd lost their seniority on their block - and was immediately attacked by members of the unnamed camp for "betraying them" (of course I had not named anyone or the camp) and "owed [this ticketed couple] and [that other ticketed couple] a public apology as well as one to the whole group for not acting like a Peer and attacking them in public..." I just set the post to "private" so I could save it should the offended parties try to do more than merely backstab me now that we're back from the event. I'm still a little at a loss how I'm the bad guy for mentioning a camp losing their block seniority in a post explaining why I was sad that day while the ticketed folks have become my poor viciously benighted victims. They are, of course, blameless and what I was posting about "never happened". My spouse asked me why I'd posted - why did I let myself care about what they do to themselves? He is right, so I've set myself a new rule - ignore the group. Disengage from any interaction and from their FB page and put myself in the mental space of noting but not speaking about anything the group does. I'd been heading that way over the last year anyway and this just put the nail in the coffin of an already dead relationship.

Nonetheless, and barring all of that, friends did stop in to say hi while we were working, and we had little moments of joy when they did even though we were usually too busy to talk for more than a couple of minutes. One person volunteered at my department specifically to spend some time chatting with me between duties. It was lovely to catch up with her. She's grown up so much! I've known her since she was a senior in High School and now her children are almost all out of High School. Towards the end of the event, there were more people allowed to be in charge of a shift and I even got a whole day off to go into town and do laundry and shopping. My spouse had to work though. That was tiring in its own way, but I felt a lightness of freedom too. One friend brought a sample of her cooking to me to taste - beans cooked in bacon fat with onions and garlic, spiced with a mix of herbs and spices she'd bought at Aunty Arwen's. That friend cooks over a fire every year and tries to eat what her persona would have eaten. And she brought it to me in an adorable little cast-iron pot that had been enameled on the inside and had a wooden lid. Hers is enameled in red but I could only find it in black - I'm going to get me one of those pots! It is just the right size for one person or two not-so-hungry ones. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KBY4RCF/ref=ox_sc_act_image_2?smid=A1TWYVWG4QDVKK&psc=1

Before Pennsic I was asked if I'd be willing to take on getting new walls for our camp's giant ger and I agreed. The old walls had been thrown away (without anyone being consulted) because "they take up too much room in storage" so I searched for a useable alternative and found seven-foot-long fabric shower curtains with a repeating design on them. Folks in the household threw money at me until we could buy as many as we needed. They look like a Persian interpretation of Mongolian art. The curtains are lightweight and pack down into a tiny pile. They are polyester so will age over time but we can replace them at need or maybe someone will make real walls someday. In the meanwhile they worked very well and looked pretty, too. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DB17DG1?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details


We also brought "sheep walls" from home, three-foot-long panels that we'd made for the Great Dark Horde encampment for War of the Wings long ago. A long-ago Autocrat had decreed just two weeks before the event that every camp was to "be completely encircled with sheet walls" but they'd typo'd and had written "sheep walls". So of course our quickly-thrown-together walls featured sheep of all varieties. At Pennsic we've been using them to hide a big plastic sink at the top of our camp but this year we learned that our regular walls had gone walkabout, so the sheep walls were press-ganged into being camp walls. We have a long boundary at the foot of a hill that we don't normally wall off, not having enough red & black panels to use. We made it into a clothesline this year but weren't really thrilled with it. I'm going to make more of those sheep walls, as are some of my household members, and we'll run the sheep walls along that boundary. Lots of people walk along that block edge as it is beside a road leading from the Bog and lakeside areas. I think the walls will entertain some of the children who make that hike.

I did not know that normal treatment of a broken finger, or even a dislocated wrist, required that the cast or splint be removed within 3 weeks of the injury lest the tendons and muscles around the break 'freeze' and mobility of the digit/wrist be lost permanently. The things we learn by way of living life...

So I am typing this cast-free, with two fingers still swollen and puffy. The break on the little finger is knitting although the skin is still dramatically bruised and swollen. I am guessing I jammed the ring finger but it is becoming easier to use while typing although the tip of each of them is tingly, and thus distracting. I am to daily attempt to bend them and use them, massaging them into easy movement else three weeks from now there will be the dreaded formal PT (as opposed to the at-home informal PT I get to do while the bones knit.)

We hosted an SCA event last weekend. It was our kingdom Crown Tourney. Normally, our Crowns are rather small with less that 300 people onsite. But this is a popular King and Queen, who put out a call to the Baronage and the Chivalry to provide challengers so our List was at 41, and attendance at 407 - record breaking for us.

We lost our contracted event site with cabins about a month ago when the owners decided to put it up for sale. It was a favored camp and a great loss. Churches are finding it harder and harder to afford the matainance. Heck, even our Scouting organizations are finding it difficult. (Holding events at Scout camps is not favored in our lush-filled kingdom. If there isn't alcohol allowed then there is little support for a camping event. This makes me sad.)

A couple who'd once lived in our barony retired across the state to a large estate of land, building their home and outbuildings by themselves pre-retirement. They specifically bought their land with an eye towards hosting SCA events. Their home (Silverleaf Estate) was our new site. Over the years they've built three outdoor showers, an outdoor kitchen (she'll use it for canning, too) and cleared enough space to set up sufficient shelter for over a hundred diners. We had 122 people onboard at Crown under two pavilions, with room for off-board diners.

I organized a Consort's breakfast. That was fairly easy. Mostly I've spent the last four weeks reminding the Autocrat about various things she either didn't think of or let drop. In some ways, I swear, I feel almost like I was the Autocrat! But that isn't fair - she came up with some creative solutions to the problems inherent in going from a full kitchen to a roughed-out one still in the works. And other members of the staff covered the numerous holes she hadn't recruited. So I was proud of my barony and the cooking staff - the Head Cook and his wife had just purchased a new house while their sale of the old one finalized the same day, only a week before the event. He was making sausages as he and she were packing boxes and doing final repairs to their old house.

Ouch. Done typing.

Oh dear. I have lazily avoided blogging since last month. Nah, really - it wasn't laziness, it was a combination of anxiety and lethargy. I still feel it but tonight I also feel like writing in here a bit. Blink your eyes, none of this will be pithy, important, or memorable.

We had a local SCA event on Saturday. I was running the registration table ("Tollner" was my job) with two new volunteers to help me. A couple of weeks ago we had gotten into a discussion about how the job used to be called "Troll", as in the story about paying the troll in order to cross the bridge... but between trying to make our SCA jargon more academically respectable and also make it easier for new attendees to find the registration table, the title 'troll' had been made Officially Discontinued and Undesireable. A few people started calling the job "the Gate", which led to jokes about the movie Ghostbusters (Gatekeeper) so they just referred to themselves as "the Gate" which wounded my ears and bent my mind. So I went looking through sources and finally asked on a Medieval Academic list about alternate terms and lo and behold here was this perfectly useable one from Middle English that even sounded vaguely like our beloved-but-passé "Troll" - Toll(ner).

My two new assistants, though, liked "Troll" and wanted to be called that. I didn't think a whole lot about the silly excuses we invented during the conversation for justifying the use of it until the morning of the event when one of them showed up with three sets of wigs for troll-doll costumes. Human sized, of course. And so there we sat, the three of us, in pink (with a baronial coronet on), purple, and rainbow hair. As I was wearing Viking Norse clothing I was proclaimed 'the most historically accurate' troll. But only because none of us was going to strip down to our skin and stick our hands out to our sides while wearing silly smiles. Many, many photos were taken and posted on various media, which I shall be years living down.

Sunday morning they, and a few more of us, gathered together to watch a showing of Dr. Strange. I liked it. I know that some of my friends did not for feminist reasons but I hold in mind that Marvel and DC comics started being written for the most part for young, young men (okay, boys) in the early 1940-60s and frankly their access to women, or even girls, was in limited and strictly defined venues. So of course we're not going to see any real kick-hinney fabulous women characters. Well, except for Agent Carter, that is. DC/Marvel heroes are going to love without knowing that they do, estimable women who they can never actually have a relationship with. At least until the movies morph away from the script lines of the comic books which birthed them.

Sunday night featured a trip to the local Sentara Hospital System Sleep Clinic where I was wired up for every possible nocturnal behavior excluding sex and left to sleep in a dark room with very loud 'white noise' machine. It was a fairly comfortable room and the bed was a sleep-number type which helped this waterbed-loving person rest but the tech's insistence about sleeping on my back was annoying and then went beyond that into quite irritating. "I've had three vertebrae replaced and cannot lay on my back without extreme pain" didn't seem to have any relevance to her.
"I'll need you to sleep for at least half an hour on your back."
"I cannot lay, much less sleep, on my back."
"I'll need you to try - it is when you are on your back that we can most easily detect a need for a c-pap machine."
"I will be in an escalating amount of pain for each minute I spend on my back. There will be no sleeping. I hope you can understand that - I cannot lay on my back."
"Well try anyway. It is important for our test."
"If I were the sort of person who showed signs of apnea while somehow miraculously sleeping on my back during this evening's test, that would do no medical good towards helping me solve my sleeping issues because I DO NOT AND NEVER HAVE SLEPT ON MY BACK. Solving for a null situation is useless."
"It will only be for half an hour or so."
Sigh.
"Whatever."

I did sleep during the night, off and on (NOT on my back and only after taking oxycodone to deal with the pain I developed after trying to follow her instructions) and then came home, showered, slept for 10 whole hours, and showered again. I believe I still have smears of that blasted guck in my hair from the various sensors. No amount of hot water seems to fully eradicate it. I'm considering a dip in a vat of denatured alcohol. And I've been assured that they will be calling me in a few days to schedule more tests before I see the specialist next month.

Sheesh. All this because I'd like to see if there is a way to train me into a regular 6-8 hours of sleep at the same general timeframe each day since I have not been successful attempting it on my own.

Helped one of my protégées with their sewing yesterday and was glad I was there to do so since she had a technical problem she had no idea for fixing (neck hole was cut wide and shallow, too wide to sit comfortably on her shoulders.) She now has a gown with a contrasting yoke, inside and out, and it encases the wide opening and has a smaller, more flattering one instead. The color combination is not what I would have chosen but these are her heraldic ones so I can't argue with the decision... well, artistically I can. Fashionably I can. But as a Scadian herald I just have to shrug my shoulders and suggested that with the new yoke she might as well add cuffs too. Some of the people reading this will see that gown in a few weeks. :)

I am feeling lighter in spirit already. My resignations had been sent a few days ago so the changes in attitude were already working through before I posted yesterday's scree. I've already caught up on the 1200+ "SCA Heraldry" list messages that I had not yet read, as well as fourteen month's worth of SCA-cooks list messages. And all of my bookkeeping (love that word - oo-kk-ee) is done. So is 'catching up on all the emails for Cultural Affairs'. In fact, I am now cheerfully going back to check on them two or three times a day, out of (gasp!) curiosity and a desire to see if there is anything I need to handle quickly. Because I want to. That's new and I like it.

I am using today to repack the Rubbermaid bins holding all of the loaner clothing and am washing all of the fabric that I'd set aside for crafting new pieces of loaner apparel. We have a couple of spare bins left over from something else we'd been doing and I shall carefully pack all of the ready-to-cut fabrics in there, safe and out of my sight. I am leaning towards passing those on to the new Gold Key deputy. He doesn't sew but he is quite conscientious. It may be that other members of the barony who do sew would be willing to 'check out' a length of fabric and return it as a completed article of garb. It doesn't have to be me.

While the fabric is cycling through the wash I believe I shall build one of my Lego kits.

Friends of ours are about to be elevated to Court Baron and Baroness - it's a surprise to them (they don't read LJ). It was announced within our group early on so folks who'd normally skip the upcoming event (fighting and archery only) would have a chance to be there and celebrate with them. They once lived in our home group and after they moved we talked the King and Queen into creating a "Marinus Protectorate" for their land. Their home, which they open up to host events and is a full acre or so with a huge open field, woods, and a river beach, is called "Silverleaf Estate" so since we won't be able to be there when the deed is done I embroidered a set of napkins for them with their beloved silver leaf on them. As usual, I got one backwards and the design is embroidered on the back rather than the front. Go figure. But still - while we're hosting the annual Great Dark Horde meeting (Khuraltai) I will know that our friends will feel our joy in their elevation.

Originally I'd meant to fill in the leaves but Bossman talked me out of it. I think he was right, especially since these are just napkins. They're cotton and embroidered with Splendor silk thread. It isn't as glossy as filament thread but it is durable and colorfast.

I've spent the last two days rolling lumpia - or more precisely, chopping up all the ingredients to go in the lumpia and finally getting to the point where I could roll a batch up. Beef ones, 115 of them so far. I'd meant to do more today but instead went shopping for more ingredients - tomorrow one of my protégées/apprentices will come over and we'll get started again. I must have all six types done by next weekend so there is a lot of chopped oriental ingredients in my fridge right now, waiting to be mixed in with the rice and soy sauce.

Everything is going slower than I want it to - the elms and oaks are pollinating the entire corner of my world and I happen to be allergic to them. Staying inside is helping - going shopping means that I'll be trying to claw my throat out sometime before I can get back home again. May I say that I am grateful to the inventors of the neti pot, Sudafed, and Zyrtec. Oh yes. And Motrin, unfortunately, as my head aches all the time right now.

So I have not been driving for Uber in the last two weeks - headachy and fuzzy-brained as I am, I don't trust myself behind a wheel. Although the loss of my weekly mad money is hitting me. How quickly we adapt to extra income, eh? I'd not realized what a sense of fulfillment it was giving me, to be able to not stress over an extra bill or a higher-cost item that I'd normally have to scrip and save for. Those trees better find a room - I want my driving evenings back.

In spite of not feeling well* I've been fabric shopping. Yes, Ms. "I don't want to stockpile fabric" went out and poured cash into the hands of retailers. Some of it was personal purchases due to Hancock's closing (over 300 dollars spent, although a chunk of that was on tools rather than fabric. I'll be setting aside my plans for buying an adult tricycle for a while until I reimburse our household account for that trip!). Other spending was not my own money. But of our own, one of the things we picked up was 'trim fabric' These ones:


A few yards of each will net me some lovely early-period stripes to turn into trim that is lightweight enough to actually bend and drape as fabric should rather than being thick and rigid as so many hand-made SCA trims end up. One of my goals as I learn how to weave is to make pretty trim that is pliable instead of stiff. I dislike seeing sleeves, for example. bow out in a stiff circle at the biceps because of the trim applied over the seam line.

We got over a hundred yards of various fabrics and one trim in three colours from an upholstery shop that was going out of business. Those are for the barony's Gold Key (newcomer's loaner items) collection. I'll be sewing until Pennsic, most likely, to get all of that converted to clothing. Of the blue there is about 53 yards. Wow! But at a dollar a yard for fabric and 75cents a yard for trim, it will be a real money saver.






*We thought I was struggling with a mean UTI - treated it once, had it return, treated it again, and then the longer test results came back showing no evidence of bacteria, so now a week into the second round of antibiotics and pain meds we've hit a wall. The next step is a specialist. In the meanwhile, I have deep-seated pain at the kidneys and lower abdomen which is sapping all of my energy. We've a weekend demo for the SCA coming up where I'll be doing onstage presentations - and all I really want to do it stay in bed and try to sleep. Somehow we'll make this work. I am not looking forward to loading our tent and equipment up, setting up, demoing, and then tearing down again. The thought exhausts me. But Bossman says we can do it so I believe him.

Rain. Yes, we've been getting spitting rain with occasional full-out storms for the last 24 hours. Even though there have been moments of breakthrough sunshine too. Today's forecast is for rain all day; and also tomorrow, and then next day, and then on Sunday or Monday Hurricane Joaquin is likely to brush through (or by). If 'through' as predicted, the eye will pass directly over our city. That should be fun. Luckily for us we are not too worried about flooding on our property. We're just high enough that the water has never reached above our porch, so our car can be backed up to the garage door (what, "in the garage"? You jest. That is Bossman's woodworking shop.) and it will be high enough to only get the tires wet. The street will flood well - I've seen neighbors boating on our street during previous storms, and our wonderful willow tree will continue getting pruned by nature. Last night's winds have already knocked down a lot of vulnerable branches. But willows thrive on annual pruning. They must have been designed for stormy areas.

"French Toast Panic" has already set in. Or so I've been told. I haven't gone to the store to witness it myself, being busy doing other things like sewing, driving Uber (ubering?), and working on the reservation list for Atlantia's Coronation. Which event, by the way, our local group is hosting at a Boy Scout reservation... this Saturday. I expect the decision about cancelling or not to be made on Friday. Until then we likely won't have enough information about which way the storm is going to swing.

Administratively this won't be the burden it would normally be as our Exchequer has been on the road for weeks and all of the reservation cheques and cash are in my hands. Or rather, all but about 6 reservations, those being the ones I was able to pass on to him at the first of this month. So should the event be cancelled, most likely the cheques-writers will be zen about me just ripping up their cheques (I can send photos!) while the cash-givers are thankfully local.

But our feast cook is going to need folks to buy up her supplies. And man, that is going to be a circus since she is NOT local to any of us.

In other news, we may be facing putting down our cat, Humilty. Her behavior has grown increasingly erratic and odd, and she has begun to miss the litter box more often than hit it. Scrubbing the bathroom floor twice a day or more often is becoming habitual. This afternoon we added up years and realized that she is a little over 13 years old, which is pretty ancient for a Manx. And after doing an internet search we are beginning to believe that senility has crept in. Otherwise she seems healthy. Barring her refusal to groom herself which is going to necessitate a furball-clipping tomorrow evening. Neither of us are really looking forward to that chore! Humility does not appreciate our grooming attempts. Or anyone else's either. She is a cantankerous loner who does not need physical contact with anyone or thing and is quite clear about it. But every once in a while she will allow us to pet her head and scratch her ears so we've learned to have one person do that while holding her while the other of us gets busy with the scissors and de-matting tools. We generally only can do one side at a time. The other side has to wait until she's forgiven us and forgotten everything except the ear scritches.

I haven't been on LiveJournal for weeks. In fact, I think I've missed some posts because my "previous 20" button led to a blank page before I saw the last post I'd remembered reading. So there's that.

Our SCA Baron and Baroness are stepping down and they'd like new coronets for their successors. And for themselves, if we could get them before Pennsic so they won't be wearing about 5lbs of steel on their heads during that event. This involves fundraising. I volunteered to organise another 'luncheon booth' featuring a modern version of a 14th century Mongol-Chinese meat roll "Thin Rolled Pancakes". The more modern version is lumpia, a Philippine dish. Its wrappers are more consistent with the earlier version than eggroll wrappers are. So for the last two weeks I've been hosting lumpia rolling days at home. We've made a little over 2,000 of them to date with about 300-400 more to do. Then, in two weeks, we shall have a booth up at an event called "Golden Rose Tourney" and sell the cooked meat rolls to the populace. Assuming that the ones folks are pre-ordering (frozen so they can cook them at home) don't deplete our supplies too much. Which, honestly, I don't see happening except for specific types. We have special batches without onions, for example, since we know that many people are allergic to them.

I calculated the amount of carbs, protein, and calories for each roll. Mostly for myself, to be frank, but also for those who I know would feel they needed to skip the lumpia because it was "too fattening / too high in carbs". As it turns out, a regular (as opposed to "heavy fighter's") serving of three to four lumpia is one within the range of permissible for adult diabetics, and is a little under 300 calories but tastes a whole lot better than a sandwich with that many calories.

So, Busy. When not 'rolling', I am shopping for more supplies to prep for the following rolling session. (Oh! And in the process I stopped by Whole Foods to buy pine nuts and picked up some more skyr for myself, and had the happy discovery that a small carton of skyr has 20 grams of protein in it, more than the average protein bar does, and stil has fewer calories. Not to mention it tastes so much better. I was a happy woman until my supply ran out again.) Or delivering finished rolls to various people's houses to store in their freezers. And I talked our webminister into putting up a webpage for it: http://www.baronyofmarinus.com/lumpia-fundraiser.php

I got to take a break during one weekend and spent it acting as a judge for the Jamestown Settlement's "Military Through the Ages" (http://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement/military-through-the-ages/ ). I really enjoyed myself. Part of that was the chance to spend time with a friend I rarely see (we judged together) and part of it was simply being able to evaluate a group's presentation and to get a chance to truly appreciate all the dedication that goes into creating an interpretation of a slice of history. I hope that I get to do it again.

Pushed myself hard, came down with the flu. I've spent the last two days trying to get my temperature down below 100f and have finally succeeded. All of a sudden food looked marvelous! I couldn't even look at food while I was fevered. Had less than 700 calories on the first day I was sick. Also lost 5 pounds so far but I know I'll find them again now that I'm feeling better.

Oh, and my latest CT scan showed an enlarged lymph node next to my heart. Which may be nothing to worry about or may be a secondary cancer, something fairly common among those of us with GIST. I'll know more next June after my next CT. Yeah - waiting that long. I'm not really digging it. Long ago I told myself that if the GIST returned or if I got some other form of cancer, I was going to take that as my sign from the Almighty that my time card had been punched. That was fine in theory for my hubby but now that we're looking at it as a possibility, he isn't interested in letting me stick to that. He says that as long as there is some form of treatment he wants me to fight. I am torn over this - I understand his grief and fear, but at the same time, I don't want to live the last bit of my life sick and suffering through another round of treatments only to come out in the end more damaged than I was before we started. This ole body has lasted through some awful stuff but I wouldn't mind trading it in for something a little more comfortable and painfree, although I am sure I'd miss those I love dreadfully.

I've been curious about the appeal of the TV show "Dexter". It is now on Netflix, so I've watched the first three episodes. I don't understand the gushing fanboi behaviour of the folks who've been watching it. Perhaps, like many of the long running TV series, the characters are not developed enough in the first few shows to actually grow on a person. Since I'm not able to think well (I gave myself until tomorrow to "just be sick"), I'm trying some more and am in the middle of episode number three. But I think I will soon be surfing the "documentary" selections soon.

My general "I've got a cold and I don't feel well at all" week capped itself on Thursday with a sinus & ear infection. My god, I do not remember ever having an ear infection before so I was taken by surprise by the extreme pain involved. Wow. A friend was in labour at the same time and I actually thought that I would be willing to trade positions with her. Yeah, it was that bad. Although it was also oddly fascinating, to be able to hear my breathing from the inside (it sounded like wind rushing in and out of a long dry tube) and my pulse pounded so loudly that I couldn't hear much else. I knew it would pass once the antibiotics took effect but I was a sad whiney woman for a while there.

Finally I caved in and took Tramadol (since I'm not allowed OTC pain drugs, which I would have preferred) and was able to lay down - with my husband's "back pain heating bandage" on my pillow where I could position my ear. That helped and I slept. I'd still be asleep if I didn't have a Rubbermaid tote full of baronial tablecloths to wash, dry, and fold before noon tomorrow. We'd completely forgotten that those came home from the event with us.

It amuses me that the extreme hunger I felt during my cold is now completely gone. I am apathetic, at best, concerning food. I should eat something, I know, since it has been about a day without, but I'm at a loss as to what. Nothing sounds appealing at all. It is so odd to boomerang from "food, I must eat!" to "meh" once the infection was checked.

And I'm nattering. Time to sign off.