Living with Mononucleosis, part 1

It is a strange thing to wake up and realize that you’ve had enough sleep. I can’t remember when I consistently woke up feeling that way, but I’m pretty positive it was before I had kids. It has happened two days this week. Woo hoo.
I’m getting enough sleep because I’m getting over mononucleosis, and I’m resting. I’ve been telling people today that I am aggressively resting. After three months of living with mono, I have learned (finally) to respect the virus and am finally doing what I was told when it was diagnosed: resting. It helps. I feel a little better, and I am getting enough sleep – although under that refreshed feeling I have the deep, thorough exhaustion which I attribute to the mono.
I have had mono long enough to stop wondering when I’ll get back to being my old self, and to consider that being my old self is what got me into this fix. I am thinking maybe I should try to design a new life that’s more like the restful life I’m living now. Not that I’ll ever be satisfied with how I’m living life. I’m grateful to be in solitude and doing not much of anything but knitting and watching TV and reading right up until I have a major case of cabin fever and feel like running out of the house screaming. I never do that – one doesn’t, usually – but I do hop in the Honda and head off to dump some recycling, or check out the yarn supply up at Granny’s Attic, or see what’s in the post office boxes, or see if there’s anything for me in the library. Then there is the obligatory stop at the grocery store.
Then I come home and scrape together some dinner.
One of the things I’m not doing much these days is cooking, so meals are exercises in improvisation. My husband is enjoying more pizza than usual, which makes him happy, I think. Meals are interesting. Today for lunch I had a leftover artichoke and a piece of pumpkin pie. It seemed to be OK. I didn’t fall over or anything afterwards.
I watch birds out the kitchen window. I bought a “Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound” book a few weeks ago. I had noticed lots of birds in the yard – especially Steller’s jays in the Asian pear tree outside the kitchen window – and decided to put a little bird food out and see what happened. What happened was a couple of dozen little guys which I identified as dark-eyed, or Oregon, juncos. Cute little guys, and lots of them, all fighting with each other over the booty. One black-topped chickadee showed up, also, but didn’t make much progress against the many juncos.
The Steller’s jays showed up to say, “Hello hello hello, what’s all this, then?” and pretty soon the jays were in and the juncos were out. But once the jays left, the juncos came right back.
I guess I’m going to have to have a heart to heart talk with myself soon. Think realistically about what life has ahead. Right now I have to assume I may be semi-laid up for another three months; that’s not an unreasonable assumption, apparently.
And I think I’ll start blogging more often.