Literally, not metaphorically.

(I know this is not the time or place, but it is on my mind as I sit here typing with my wrists bumping up against the keyboard, and so:

Things that are Not Wise for Slightly-Anemic Writers to Do: play volleyball using a soccer ball)

It hasn’t been the easiest week. I always forget how fervored I get in a fever. How completely passionate and angry and irritable and cranky with the world. How everything matters far far more than it should.

I cried for two hours because my mother didn’t call me, even though I called her on my cellphone and left a message for her to call me, before I remembered she was on a kayaking trip and couldn’t get back to me. I cried because I had to grade papers, and then I cried because I couldn’t make it to school to grade papers. I cried because I couldn’t cuddle with Ellen, and then I locked my room door and cried because I can’t get away from anyone here. Don’t worry. I don’t normally cry that much; I was just sick. The last sad fervor is that I was furious with Lola a sum total of 13 times over the last three days, two of which resulted in Me Snapping At Her.

With one of them, I have to admit I’m a little relieved I snapped: several days ago, I don’t know why, maybe because I didn’t lay into her niece when she did it, but Lola started Coming Into My Room Unannounced. As in: sauntering in without knocking or even a little rap to let me know she’s coming. Although I have been rather Extremely Predictable in my lovemaking habits, I’m not sure how she would be able to know if I were changing or nudey or looking at nudey pictures or whatever. I basically moved from very startled about this, to mentally pleading that she would stop. I’m such a pussy about hurting people’s feelings about things, but Lola was just coming in and asking me for my laundry, or asking me if I was getting up in the morning, or asking me if I had a fever, or asking me how my day went, or whatever, and I was not very happy about what felt like the last breakdown of relative safety.

It took me a little while, but I finally realized that this is what she does with everyone in Norma’s family. That somehow in Ecuadorian culture, or at least in this family, barging into each other’s rooms is an affectionate way to interact. I thought about this for awhile, because being accepted into a family is never anything to look at as a cheap miracle, but I finally decided that no, as much as I like these people, and even have affection for them, they are not close enough to me to be family, and if they were my own family, they’d certainly be knocking, because A would rip my head off, but this is a different family and did I want to cohere to their customs?

In the end, the answer was no. Privacy is more important to me than being accepted as being the same as a member of this family. Family, sure, but exactly like their family, no. Knocking is just insurmountable for me. I even knock when someone sees me coming just to let them know I’m coming in. And if they don’t see me coming, and no matter what, I’m coming in, it at least gives folks the time to toss a blanket over their bodies if need be… So, Lola picked one fevered morning to walk into my bedroom and ask me if I still had a fever and if I was getting up this morning, and I snapped and asked her if she could knock.

She laughed. I’m starting to see that this laugh is more than I originally thought it was. Lola’s one contradiction to the “what you see, what you get” theory. She was also laughing when she tiptoed into my room and told me that she broke my coffee pot. One might think the breakage was a grand old joke, but considering the fact that she has brought up the Broken Coffee Pot topic five or six times since, each time asking me if I really loved the Broken Coffee Pot, if the Broken Coffee Pot was supposed to go back to the Washington with me, whether the Broken Coffee Pot was expensive, what I think will be an adequate substitute for the Broken Coffee Pot… etc., I am now forced to interpret the laugh as more of a Nervous and Upset thing than I thought before.

(By the way, I have taken every opportunity to assure her that one stained, average glass coffee pot was not the passion and love of my entire existence. The filter maybe, but the pot—no.)

So, I basically hurt her feelings by asking her to knock, which I knew would happen, but being that I had a temperature topping 101, I didn’t really care. I am a cruel, cruel lady when I’m sick. (Maybe I should write a list of things that I am only capable of doing when feverish, and keep it by my bed just in case the opportunity arises…)

The second time I snapped is hopefully not part of some repeat effort, on either my own or Lola’s part. I am now vowing to make a weekly run to the supermarket to stock up on Basic Food Necessities. I just don’t feel like going hungry when I don’t want to. Sometimes I think there is nothing more frustrating than being sick and not being in charge of my own diet.

That’s exaggerating a little, and I’m sure you might be saying: what about the sweet chicken-noodle-soupers (like Sarah)? Yes, yes, there is a sick-point when you don’t want to cook anything (always, if you are me), but always one get to decide what to eat, right? To eat or not to each chicken noodle soup. Or to eat lettuce, or fruit, or...

But when your entire diet is in someone else’s hands, you can Ask And Be Denied. Basically, I didn’t want any food-food, only salad, tuna fish, and fruit. Maybe bread sometimes. But the general idea was that if I didn’t want rice and chicken, I didn’t want food. Lola told me that pineapple is off-limits when you have a fever, and refused to buy me fruit—the only thing I asked for—for two days. Then, when I was feeling better and very hungry after two days of relative fasting (salad), there suddenly was a Habit of No Food, and so dinner was nowhere to be had at dinnertime, not even bread or crackers. And then this morning, I needed to leave the house early, on my day’s project to Get Better, and I told Lola and Norma I’d be leaving at 6:30am and asked if I could get a packed lunch for the day (and of course, breakfast). No problem, they said.

Only at 6:40am, when I absolutely had to walk out the door, there was no coffee (Lola hides the grounds from me), no bread, no breakfast items, no packed lunch, and no Lola, although there was a kettle of boiling water and some cooking rice on the stove. So I left. Walking to grab my cab, I ran into Lola, who asked me “Hey, aren’t you even going to have some coffee?”

Yeah, second snapping. But I think I’m getting better? I just said, “No, I’m late. Ciao.” And ran off.

But I knew I said it snotty. Empty belly. 99-degree temperature.

I have to admit: I’m starting to get worried about myself, even if I have the excuse of over 100-degrees and me rolling around for a day in bed for the first sick-day I’ve taken from work in about 3 years. Even if I have the excuse of not being able to take the dive lessons I’ve waited two weeks for.

My two example fever dreams:

1) I give midterms. Midterms. Midterms. All night. All Friggin Night.

2) I find a cavern full of fossilized duck-billed dinosaurs. The cavern is in a park owned by my and Peter’s family, and I tell everyone so we can start excavating. My family decides to remove the fossils by ripping all of the trees out of the park, ripping up the flowers and grass and everything, and I get angry telling them how that’s an irresponsible way to treat a community park (my father responds, “The will of the common man is infinitely patient, my daughter. You should learn from them.”), not to mention the fact that it is not a good way to do a fossil dig. I lecture on missing root systems and rainwater and dirt rushing down into the cavern. (There are certain ironies here about being in a family of biologists and conservationists). In the end, I get into a huge all-out fistfight with my family. Bloody noses. Fury. I wake up mad.

What is wrong with me that I keep getting so mad? What is wrong with me?

Two tasks for the Upcoming Year (July Resolutions): 1) I’m going to break into a neo-hippy, psueda-Buddha self-enlightenment guru-hiri-giri-mecca-licca-solla-bema experiment. That is, I will take either: a meditation class or a yoga class. I will not put flowers in my hair, but I will try to find some practical means of Wresting My Brain back to me. 2) I will either get counseling, or spend every waking moment finding an occasional escape from the city. Speaking of which, read the next post.