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I don’t usually do this, but let’s start this one with a song, okay?

Aside from my general love of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and all things Beatles, this song fits the second half of this week pretty well.  Things haven’t been that bad, but this has been a week of vastly fluctuating fluctuations.  In a semester of vastly fluctuating fluctuations and strangely long weeks, that’s saying something.

And now, safely in the second part of the work week on Thursday, I can say that Friday will have been well earned.

Let’s do a week in review (even though this is a slightly dangerous proposition as it’s only Thursday and all): Monday and Tuesday were quite successful experiments in Monday and Tuesday-ness.  I mean, heck, I had two unique activities in those evenings: glass class on Monday and a class at the Cooking Cottage on Tuesday*.  It really doesn’t get much more civilized/adult/productive/interesting than that.

But Wednesday came rolling around, and things got weird.  To start, I spent the day here:

I didn't realize everything -- including my pillowcases -- matched until after I took the picture

But maybe I should go back a step.  How does one go from sipping on wine and soup to parked on the couch amidst a pillow fort of her own making?

On Tuesday night, I started to feel a little funky, all clogged and swollen on the left side of my face and neck.  I initially chalked my stuffiness up to post-glass sinus aches** and then to the congestion that comes with crying during an onion-heavy cooking demonstration.  But things seemed beyond the glass and onion-induced as I drove home Tuesday night and found that my rendition of “Bust the Windows Out Your Car” was more off-key and strained than usual.

To no one’s surprise, I woke up on Wednesday with a tiny fever.  Since I promised myself I’d listen to my body a bit more in the new year — something I haven’t been doing too much when the conflict of fun vs. sleep arises — I took the day off and rested.  In general, the whole thing seemed to work out.  Aside from some general malaise and tiredness, the symptoms of the minor cold/flu that seemed to be lurking in my system (despite warnings from the health center that they could take me down at any moment) more or less passed.

Everything seemed to be just fine.  That is, until it was time to go to bed.  That’s when I did this to my face:

Ignore the size of my pores. Also, I'm not trying to be sad panda about my face. I took this picture with Photo Booth, and that requires some concentration.

Which actually doesn’t look too bad, but hurts like…well…like a face injury that drew blood.

And unfortunately this almost-a-black-eye bleeder wasn’t the result of an unfortunate time at my most recent fight…oops…I mean…book club meeting.

So, what did I do?

Short answer: Something stupid.

Slightly longer answer: I forgot where my furniture is in the dark.

Even longer answer: Like I always do, I left my purse next to one of my kitchen chairs when I got home from the health center/strep test extravaganza that was yesterday’s main event.  And — for reasons that I’m not quite clear on — I wanted to check something in my wallet.  But, since I was closer to my bag than the light switch, I figured I’d get my wallet and then turn the lights on.  But I forgot how close the bag and the chair were to each other.  So, rather than lean to the right and safely bend down to retrieve my belongings off the floor, I went straight down.  Face-first into my kitchen chair.

And that, my friends, is how you knock a minor cold/flu right out of your body.

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* Vegetarian Soup Party! What?!

** This actually happens to me all the time, so I’m not just making stuff up here.