October 04, 2000: frozen
Last night, I was too cold to even shiver.
I'm fighting off some sort of virus, and yesterday I went to work to get some stuff to do, came home, and worked on HTML for the rest of the day. I was actually feeling better with tea and rest and kitty love. After I was done with work, I decided to upgrade my computer's operating system to Win2000. This was pretty easy, but reconfiguring everything took me another couple of hours. The temperature in my office had dropped significantly while I was working, but I didn't really notice except to go get slippers because my feet were cold.
(rule 1: if your feet are cold, it's too late to put slippers on. You have to get the blood moving and get them warm before you put slippers on.)
When i got done with that, my thoughts were sluggish and I was really, really cold. Too cold to shiver. And very tired. I crawled into bed, tucked myself in, and waited to get warm.
(rule 2: when hypothermia hits, you cannot spare the body heat to warm up clothing or blankets.)
Twenty-five minutes later I was still icy, the sheets hadn't warmed up much, and though Juniper was curled up with me, 15 pounds of furry cat love is just not enough to warm me up. It's at times like this that I regret not living with someone else who could make me tea and stuff. I was warmer than I had been, but still not warm enough, so I finally decided to get up and take a hot shower, my universal remedy for these "cold attacks". I've been having these attacks for years, and I've found that a hot shower and imbibing warm liquids is the only thing that will help quickly enough to do any good.
While I was waiting for the shower to warm up, I took my temperature. This was the first time I'd done this during a cold attack.
95.8.
That would be the clinical definition of mild hypothermia, y'all.
(rule 3: your brain will not work very well when you have hypothermia. Remember this and think only very simple thoughts.)
It's not serious, but it's a sign that my body's getting ready to hunker down for the winter. And it's time to get out the blankets for the bed--the comforter and sheets just aren't enough any more. I've had these cold attacks for years and years, and they're annoying more than anything, but it's finally occurred to me that I might want to actually tell a doctor about them one of these days. Heh.
But I'm feeling better. I seem to have actually beaten back whatever this virus was and escaped most of the illness. I had a few sniffles yesterday and a bad headache, but the sore throat is gone and although I'm still feeling a little weak, I'm actually doing all right, and I'll be working out again starting tomorrow.
The amazing things that Vitamin C, zinc, and mysterious preparations of mushrooms will do for me. Mmmm.
yeardescending
walking
straight line
fence rail
October sun
ka-taa; ka-taa; drums
gliding from yes to no
from kiss to tell
from egg to shell
walking
dark line
deep cut
November luck
da-room; da-room; hooves
pounding in golden fields
on clear-cut hills
through brilliant woods
running
free line
cold dream
December eyes
ih-tum; ih tum; sounds
rolling from mist to shore
from danced to sung
Solstice comes!
--10/4/00
