Did I fall into a hole?

Where have I been?

I don't know. Sick. Tired. Sick. 

Really sick.

Like I was in the middle of a company dinner and I had to run out mid toast to be sick in the bathroom. 

It's a damn good thing I have good health insurance now so going to a doctor is not a concern. It's not even expensive. Twenty five dollars for a visit and ten dollars for my medicine. That's a pretty good deal, if you ask me. 

There's a new rule at work that if we're going to call in sick we have to call the owner himself on his personal cell phone and tell him, and then he'll call whoever needs to know.

Well, after leaving the dinner early and being sick all the next day (which happened to be my day off), I was still sick on Thursday. But the idea of calling the owner was so horrifying, not only because he's the big boss but also because I tend to cry when I describe what feels wrong in my body, that I decided it was better to go to work anyway and just get sent home.

It was brilliant. I went to work in a sweatshirt and jeans, stayed for thirty minutes, and had a coworker take me home with no fuss, and I did not have to call the owner. That's the way to do it, you know. Don't call in. Go to work and then just have Manager Man send you home. 

If I'm ever feeling sick again I will do that.

I've missed you guys, but I haven't caught up on posts. It seems everybody keeps living their lives without me. It's a little disappointing. I kind of hoped that when I disappeared the whole world stopped functioning until I came back again. But it seems you guys are still up and functioning. Way to crush my dreams, guys. 

Seriously, though. I fully intend to get back into the thick of this particular blogosphere as soon as possible. Which means after I'm finished changing my sister's paper. Second one, you know, and she hasn't improved. It's a nightmare. In fact, I'm supposed to be editing now but I can't make sense of this one opening sentence and it's baffling. I can't move forward with the paragraph until I know what it means. And I have no idea what it means.

I may not be the best writer in the world, but I'm pretty sure my thoughts are always coherent, at the very least, even if they don't make actual sense. (For instance, I'm terrified of sharks appearing in swimming pools. I express the idea well, but it still doesn't make sense.)

Anyway, I'm going back to the paper now. So...you know. Thanks for still being around?

Just when you think there's no one crazier than me...

I spend like ninety percent of my time imagining horrific outcomes for things I consider doing. 

For instance, when I go up a ladder at work to take down an oboe, I imagine all of the things that could possibly happen while I'm up on that ladder. Someone sneaking up behind me, someone dropping a book loudly behind me, somebody screaming suddenly, the ladder buckling, somebody knocking the ladder over on purpose, me reaching too far for the oboe...

All of these different scenarios all feature the end result: me falling off the ladder and breaking my neck which either leads to my tragic death or puts me in a wheelchair as a paraplegic for the rest of my presumably long life.

I constantly think about all of the horrible things that can result from whatever simple task it is that I am doing. My god, using the hole puncher I imagine chopping off part of my finger and getting a serious gangrene infection and dying a slow, agonizing death or losing my finger and living with a lifelong knowledge that my hands will never play a flute again.

It's freaking horrifying.

It's a damned depressing way to go through life, too. My days are filled with horrors and fears and second thoughts. When I decide to do something, half the time I change my mind simply because the worst case scenario my mind creates is so terrifying I become incapable of doing it myself. Simple things like rearranging instrument displays become games of direct and correct as I instruct other people (usually Lord Darminick, formerly Denominator) on how I want things done. It would save time, energy, and frustration if I would just hop up and do it myself, but I could fall with a tenor sax in my hand and the neck could stab through my skin when I hit and sever my jugular. I'd bleed to death in seconds: death my tenor sax. Well, the obituary would be interesting.

It's just frustrating. Just once I'd like to be able to do something, anything, without considering the fifty million ways I'm likely to die while doing the things that must get done. 

But then I talked to a man today who has problems way worse than mine.

Because, you know, he insists on buying a brand new trumpet that has never been played. By anyone. Ever. 

And that is literally impossible. Because no manufacturer, no matter who you are or what you say, will release an instrument from their factory without giving it a play test. It will never happen. They have to test the instruments along each stage of the process to make sure it works. There will always be at least ONE PERSON who has played an instrument before you.

It's just the way it works.

So he wants to pay sixty dollars MORE to have a brand new instrument chemically cleaned when he comes to buy it. Just to make sure there are no germs.

And buddy...you have got to be seriously fucked up if you are afraid the germs are coming to get you from a trumpet that had someone put air through it six weeks ago for five seconds.