"sharp sound of dull math"

It's been a long week and a half of being flu-type sick, if not actually technically having the flu. And I've had a lot of weird head and jaw and ear pain, and I figured it was par for the course, I somehow never learned how to blow my nose gently and often end up mildly damaging my ears.

 

But last night, even though the cold is getting better, the pain my left jaw/under-ear got less ignorable. I'm absolutely terrified it could be something teeth-related, my history with my teeth is crap, but I decided to check out Urgent Care first sin e it was the slightly less alarming prospect. I got diagnosed with a ear infection but not the ear drum kind, apparently the canal in front of the ear drum can also get infected. The treatment is ear drops, and Nonsense wants to help so very badly with application of them. I for some reason don't entirely trust the diagnosis, but I can run with five days of ear drops to at least stall the dental visit.

 

January sucked. Kind of epically. And I feel like I barely inhabited the month to boot. I have all these hopes, all these grand ideas, all these new ways I want to live, and mostly I've been coughing and tired all the time, not reading as much as I want, not volunteering as much as I want, not cooking or cleaning as much as I want. And my world seems to keep narrowing down to Light, Delight and Abundance, and then when I get sick, narrowing to just my bed.  

 

I had meant to skip over new years and make goals for my birthday, and then my birthday just sort of got fired in the shuffle, and there wasn't enough brain to actually come up with goals, enough brain to not feel pre-defeated. I don't know if I will now, I don't know what makes sense.  I'm having some complicated feelings about how I take up space in the world, both as a physical body issue and as a person who can't convince her dog to chill the fuck out (and like seventeen thousand other ways). 

 

I broke the dark-by-9:30 rule I've set myself to bathing-suit shop with Abundance, but now there's going to be peppermint tea with honey and a book to read. Earlier when I searched my google photos for the phrase "dog food", it actually returned the result of a picture of Nonsense's food bag that Light sent me last time I had to shop for dog food. The future is a magical and occasionally unsettlling place.