well, this went downhill fast
May. 17th, 2013 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardWell, last night was...horrific.
My wrists got really bad on Wednesday and have been hovering it "terrible, so terrible" since then, to the extent that I sit around wondering if mixing ibuprofen and paracetamol is a good idea (apparently, according to my flatmate, who heard it from her GP) since ibuprofen on its own does nothing and paracetamol doesn't do much either, but does slightly more, and also seriously wondering how fucked I am for the papers I have to write this weekend. (One of my coursemates suggested going to the health center and asking for mitigating circumstances re: the papers, so I'll keep that in mind for Monday if I'm still messed up by then.)
Last night the administration for my building told us they were going to turn the water off from 8:00 to 11:00 to do some routine maintenance, so I thought, okay, I'll shower at 11:00 and go to bed at midnight because I had to get up at 7:00 this morning. WELL. The water did not come back on until 1:30. (It turns out they changed it, which I only saw when I got in the elevator this morning where they'd posted a sign saying basically, "Ha, we changed the times from 10:30 to 1:30 because we are JUST THAT AWESOME." Because obviously at 8:00 at night everyone in this building goes in the elevator.) AND THEN the fire alarm started going off for a couple seconds at a time at fifteen to forty-five minute intervals -- I counted at least ten times, but it might have been more, because after the first four I stopped getting up to bitch about it on Twitter and had also figured out that the fire alarm wasn't actually going off in an, "evacuate, evacuate!" sort of way. And I didn't get to shower before going to bed, either -- I hate going to bed unshowered, so I was lying in bed at three in the morning wondering if it was worth it to just get off and have a quick shower, and then the fire alarm would go off again, and repeat ad infinitum until 7 am, when I finally could get up and -- for the first time in ages, I actually cannot remember the last time I took a shower in the morning -- shower.
The fire alarm boxes/system/whatever/thingymajig was still screeing faintly when I left to go to uni to meet one of my coursemates for coffee -- well, tea for both of us -- before the trip. OH BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE, because for most of the day I had a BRAND NEW horrific terrible agony in my right wrist, which was manageable in the morning, but got progressively worse all afternoon, so while we were wandering around Caerleon and Caerwent I was clutching my wrist and cursing faintly to myself and praying for the painkillers to kick in, and not appreciating the nice Roman ruins at all. (Oh, yeah, we went to Wales. Also the Cotswolds! Very pretty. Only rained a little.) My impression of the afternoon -- in the morning we did Chedworth Villa -- is kind of taken by the terrible pain in my wrist, which seriously was a whole new kind of pain and which I did, in fact, wake up with -- I think I might have slept on it funny? But I don't know. Of course I spent a large portion of the day mildly nauseous, since we were bumping around in the back of the Land Rover, and couldn't eat anything because again: mildly nauseous. The painkillers finally kicked in on the way back to Leicester, presumably while I was lost in the sweet oblivion of sleep, but my right now my left wrist is starting to kick up a fuss, ugh.
Also my cold, having thankfully been gone most of the morning, appears to have returned. I just...I hate this so much, you guys. I hate being in pain, I hate my conflicted feelings about actually dealing with said pain, I hate the fact that I don't actually deal with it very well, and I hate that I'm so hung up on it that it's affecting...everything. Because even if I don't actively hurt, it's there in the back of my mind, and if I do hurt, then I have concentrating on anything else because part of me is going, ow ow ow and if you do this will it make that worse? and I don't know what's wrong. And I have papers, and I need to write them, and I can't concentrate half the time and when I can I'm terrified that the amount of typing I'm need to do is going to screw me up, even though it's not as if I haven't written that much or more in the past few weeks, even with the wrist pain, I just...I don't know what's happening and I hate it and I just...I want it to stop. And if painkillers don't work, and sometimes they don't -- a lot of the time they don't -- I don't know if it's because I'm too used to them (I dealt with my getting my wisdom teeth out just on ibuprofen because my mother threw out the vicodin I was prescribed -- look, I come by my issues honestly) or because it's all in my head or if there's something really, really wrong. And then it gets better, for a little while, and I think it's over or that I made it up and then I do something and it comes back and I don't know how think about this and everything else and I just -- I just. I don't know what to do and I need to think about my papers and I want to get plane tickets home but I'm not sure of the timing re: when I need to be in Leicester and I just want to go home and I seriously feel like I'm overreacting, I just can't seem to stop.
(And I want to go home but on the other hand I'm worried I'll go home and -- because small town, right -- people will be like, 'Oh, that Katrina [Last Name], what a failure. Went to a fancy private university in New Orleans, went to graduate school in England, came home because WHAT A FAILURE.' BECAUSE I'M JUST THAT SELF-ABSORBED, APPARENTLY.)
Okay. I'm going to go cry in the shower now and drink this adorably-named cold medicine in the hopes that it will kill both the cold and the minor, minor wrist pain (BUT IT'S STILL THERE) and then try and write at least a paragraph of at least one paper. (Like, I'm not worried about the fact I have to write 9-10K in three and a half days, I can do that easy. I just hope it's a coherent 9K and that I have enough sources.)
Also the other day I bought a book with the tagline "Meet the Godfather of Sherwood Forest" because when I'm stressed I make objectively terrible retail therapy decisions. (It will either be amazing or awful. I will let y'all know.) You will be proud to know that I did not today at Caerleon buy a book called "Augustus: The Godfather of Europe" (or something along those lines) because I don't like Augustus all that much (or at all) and also I read enough about Rome as it is, I don't need to read about Rome for fun.
On the bright side, M. and I had a cheerful discussion about which historical figures we had crushes on: Hannibal for me and Caesar for her. This led to me saying, "What, doesn't everyone want to get in on this discussion of what emperor they'd like to bang?" and everyone in the Land Rover going, "WAIT WHAT IS GOING ON BACK THERE WAIT WE DON'T WANT TO KNOW" including our course director, who is a Very Important Roman Archaeologist (Or Something). You're Romanists, guys! This is a very important question! And then M. and I both agreed that if we were going to stretch this to the Byzantines, Theodora would probably be a bunch of fun.
When we're not hating everything in the world or getting into bitchfights over how fucking fucked up classics is as a field (answer: so fucked up, jesus christ, SO FUCKED UP. Classics is the most fucked up of all the liberal arts. Like, you have no idea if you haven't been subjected to some of the infighting. I'm not even sure I should call it classics, because there are classicists and then there are ancient historians and then there are classical archaeologists and ninety percent of the time they all hate each other and think the others are wrong, so wrong, so terribly terribly wrong. And somewhere in there are art historians, too, and it's classics, so it subdivides in terrifying ways), classics people can be a lot of fun. (I wonder if Hellenists are as terrifying as Romanists. Probably. I've heard some stories.)
I...would say something about the sites we saw, except I don't really know what to say. We saw some ruins, they were nice, we were almost run over by a horde of Welsh schoolchildren, I found out that the National Trust sells William Wilberforce Freedom Ale or something. I will continually find it amusing when ruins are displayed with an archaeologist's kit abandoned in the middle, as if to say, "Yes. This is how it's done. Here are some brushes and a small trowel." (They should show off the mattocks. Mattocks are awesome. Seriously, that's what I took away from Cambridge. MATTOCKS ARE AWESOME.) I guess I also saw part of a skeleton at Caerleon, but that was the site where I spent most of the half hour we were in the museum clutching my wrist and trying not to cry or swear too loudly since there were people not from my course present.
The Cotswolds were pretty, though. I am always surprised at how many sheep there are everywhere. (I mean, besides in the middle of Leicester, no sheep here. But like everywhere else.)
My wrists got really bad on Wednesday and have been hovering it "terrible, so terrible" since then, to the extent that I sit around wondering if mixing ibuprofen and paracetamol is a good idea (apparently, according to my flatmate, who heard it from her GP) since ibuprofen on its own does nothing and paracetamol doesn't do much either, but does slightly more, and also seriously wondering how fucked I am for the papers I have to write this weekend. (One of my coursemates suggested going to the health center and asking for mitigating circumstances re: the papers, so I'll keep that in mind for Monday if I'm still messed up by then.)
Last night the administration for my building told us they were going to turn the water off from 8:00 to 11:00 to do some routine maintenance, so I thought, okay, I'll shower at 11:00 and go to bed at midnight because I had to get up at 7:00 this morning. WELL. The water did not come back on until 1:30. (It turns out they changed it, which I only saw when I got in the elevator this morning where they'd posted a sign saying basically, "Ha, we changed the times from 10:30 to 1:30 because we are JUST THAT AWESOME." Because obviously at 8:00 at night everyone in this building goes in the elevator.) AND THEN the fire alarm started going off for a couple seconds at a time at fifteen to forty-five minute intervals -- I counted at least ten times, but it might have been more, because after the first four I stopped getting up to bitch about it on Twitter and had also figured out that the fire alarm wasn't actually going off in an, "evacuate, evacuate!" sort of way. And I didn't get to shower before going to bed, either -- I hate going to bed unshowered, so I was lying in bed at three in the morning wondering if it was worth it to just get off and have a quick shower, and then the fire alarm would go off again, and repeat ad infinitum until 7 am, when I finally could get up and -- for the first time in ages, I actually cannot remember the last time I took a shower in the morning -- shower.
The fire alarm boxes/system/whatever/thingymajig was still screeing faintly when I left to go to uni to meet one of my coursemates for coffee -- well, tea for both of us -- before the trip. OH BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE, because for most of the day I had a BRAND NEW horrific terrible agony in my right wrist, which was manageable in the morning, but got progressively worse all afternoon, so while we were wandering around Caerleon and Caerwent I was clutching my wrist and cursing faintly to myself and praying for the painkillers to kick in, and not appreciating the nice Roman ruins at all. (Oh, yeah, we went to Wales. Also the Cotswolds! Very pretty. Only rained a little.) My impression of the afternoon -- in the morning we did Chedworth Villa -- is kind of taken by the terrible pain in my wrist, which seriously was a whole new kind of pain and which I did, in fact, wake up with -- I think I might have slept on it funny? But I don't know. Of course I spent a large portion of the day mildly nauseous, since we were bumping around in the back of the Land Rover, and couldn't eat anything because again: mildly nauseous. The painkillers finally kicked in on the way back to Leicester, presumably while I was lost in the sweet oblivion of sleep, but my right now my left wrist is starting to kick up a fuss, ugh.
Also my cold, having thankfully been gone most of the morning, appears to have returned. I just...I hate this so much, you guys. I hate being in pain, I hate my conflicted feelings about actually dealing with said pain, I hate the fact that I don't actually deal with it very well, and I hate that I'm so hung up on it that it's affecting...everything. Because even if I don't actively hurt, it's there in the back of my mind, and if I do hurt, then I have concentrating on anything else because part of me is going, ow ow ow and if you do this will it make that worse? and I don't know what's wrong. And I have papers, and I need to write them, and I can't concentrate half the time and when I can I'm terrified that the amount of typing I'm need to do is going to screw me up, even though it's not as if I haven't written that much or more in the past few weeks, even with the wrist pain, I just...I don't know what's happening and I hate it and I just...I want it to stop. And if painkillers don't work, and sometimes they don't -- a lot of the time they don't -- I don't know if it's because I'm too used to them (I dealt with my getting my wisdom teeth out just on ibuprofen because my mother threw out the vicodin I was prescribed -- look, I come by my issues honestly) or because it's all in my head or if there's something really, really wrong. And then it gets better, for a little while, and I think it's over or that I made it up and then I do something and it comes back and I don't know how think about this and everything else and I just -- I just. I don't know what to do and I need to think about my papers and I want to get plane tickets home but I'm not sure of the timing re: when I need to be in Leicester and I just want to go home and I seriously feel like I'm overreacting, I just can't seem to stop.
(And I want to go home but on the other hand I'm worried I'll go home and -- because small town, right -- people will be like, 'Oh, that Katrina [Last Name], what a failure. Went to a fancy private university in New Orleans, went to graduate school in England, came home because WHAT A FAILURE.' BECAUSE I'M JUST THAT SELF-ABSORBED, APPARENTLY.)
Okay. I'm going to go cry in the shower now and drink this adorably-named cold medicine in the hopes that it will kill both the cold and the minor, minor wrist pain (BUT IT'S STILL THERE) and then try and write at least a paragraph of at least one paper. (Like, I'm not worried about the fact I have to write 9-10K in three and a half days, I can do that easy. I just hope it's a coherent 9K and that I have enough sources.)
Also the other day I bought a book with the tagline "Meet the Godfather of Sherwood Forest" because when I'm stressed I make objectively terrible retail therapy decisions. (It will either be amazing or awful. I will let y'all know.) You will be proud to know that I did not today at Caerleon buy a book called "Augustus: The Godfather of Europe" (or something along those lines) because I don't like Augustus all that much (or at all) and also I read enough about Rome as it is, I don't need to read about Rome for fun.
On the bright side, M. and I had a cheerful discussion about which historical figures we had crushes on: Hannibal for me and Caesar for her. This led to me saying, "What, doesn't everyone want to get in on this discussion of what emperor they'd like to bang?" and everyone in the Land Rover going, "WAIT WHAT IS GOING ON BACK THERE WAIT WE DON'T WANT TO KNOW" including our course director, who is a Very Important Roman Archaeologist (Or Something). You're Romanists, guys! This is a very important question! And then M. and I both agreed that if we were going to stretch this to the Byzantines, Theodora would probably be a bunch of fun.
When we're not hating everything in the world or getting into bitchfights over how fucking fucked up classics is as a field (answer: so fucked up, jesus christ, SO FUCKED UP. Classics is the most fucked up of all the liberal arts. Like, you have no idea if you haven't been subjected to some of the infighting. I'm not even sure I should call it classics, because there are classicists and then there are ancient historians and then there are classical archaeologists and ninety percent of the time they all hate each other and think the others are wrong, so wrong, so terribly terribly wrong. And somewhere in there are art historians, too, and it's classics, so it subdivides in terrifying ways), classics people can be a lot of fun. (I wonder if Hellenists are as terrifying as Romanists. Probably. I've heard some stories.)
I...would say something about the sites we saw, except I don't really know what to say. We saw some ruins, they were nice, we were almost run over by a horde of Welsh schoolchildren, I found out that the National Trust sells William Wilberforce Freedom Ale or something. I will continually find it amusing when ruins are displayed with an archaeologist's kit abandoned in the middle, as if to say, "Yes. This is how it's done. Here are some brushes and a small trowel." (They should show off the mattocks. Mattocks are awesome. Seriously, that's what I took away from Cambridge. MATTOCKS ARE AWESOME.) I guess I also saw part of a skeleton at Caerleon, but that was the site where I spent most of the half hour we were in the museum clutching my wrist and trying not to cry or swear too loudly since there were people not from my course present.
The Cotswolds were pretty, though. I am always surprised at how many sheep there are everywhere. (I mean, besides in the middle of Leicester, no sheep here. But like everywhere else.)