Is it Christmas?

What a week! Last week I was fussing about Christmas being overwhelming. This week -- I don't know. This has got to be the weirdest Christmas we've ever had. Maybe it will get more normal in the days ahead. I hope so.

So, let's see. Last Sunday I was feeling overwhelmed, but was otherwise OK. I had already baked four batches of cookies (peppermint meltaways, icky Vietnamese coffee brownies, date crunch, and gingerbread cookies), gone to a bunch of special things, and of course had sent the cards and made the family calendar. So I was only a little behind. 

On Monday I woke up feeling tired. Rocket Boy went to work, the kids went to school (although Teen A, who had been coughing for days, at first said he felt too sick to go -- which is VERY unusual for him, he muscles his way through everything), and I spent the day trying to get myself to do things while feeling exhausted. I did make cookie batch number 5 (panocha squares), and maybe went to the grocery store (can't remember), but mostly I just lay around, feeling like I'd recently run a marathon. I did manage to take a walk in the late afternoon, but I was pushing myself to do it. (I have not taken a walk since then.)

The source of my fatigue became apparent on Tuesday, when I began to cough. Whatever this illness is, it mainly involves coughing. There's a little nasal involvement, but not much, and no sore throat. We think there's a little fever (we don't have a thermometer that we know how to work, so can't say for sure), some headaches and body aches, a lot of fatigue. But mostly coughing. I coughed along all day, trying to avoid coughing on the cookie I made that day (batch number 6 -- lemon butter curls -- delicious and so cute), and by evening I felt really sick. 

The kids had their first final exams on Tuesday, and by Tuesday night Teen B was saying he felt sick too (and was coughing). But on Tuesday afternoon he shooed me out of the house so that he could do his band final in private (he had to record himself playing a bunch of scales and submit it to his teacher). So, armed with cough drops, I went to Target and did some Christmas shopping. I'm sorry -- this is a blanket apology to everyone I ran into at Target -- for spreading this awful, awful illness. At least I didn't cough on anyone. Then I went to the post office to mail the German cards, stood in a long line, probably infected people...

Wednesday... hmm. I don't remember a lot about Wednesday. I dragged myself out of bed around noon to prepare to drive Teen B to school for his geology final, and he said he felt too sick to go. "You have to go," I said. "It's the final." "I can't." I was too sick to argue further. I put in an absence for him (he could always make it up on Friday) and went back to bed. It was good that I did it when I did, because around 1:45 our power went out. 

Did I mention we were having a windstorm? Dangerously high winds had been predicted for that day, and Xcel Energy had a planned power outage scheduled (to avoid setting off fires caused by dangling power lines, etc.). We were just BARELY in the area that was supposed to lose power, like two houses away from the border. But 10 am went by and we still had power, 11 am and still power -- and then 1:45 and no power. Our whole neighborhood went dark, so we think this was not actually part of the planned outage (the PSPS), we think a transformer blew. But we don't know, because our landline-which-isn't-really-a-landline-anymore went out too, even though it's supposed to stay on for a couple of days during outages (it has a generator attached to it or something). Xcel only knows our landline number, so we didn't get any messages about the outage. But apparently none of my neighbors did either, so oh well.

In bed, trying to sleep through the howling wind, I wouldn't even have noticed that the power was out, but Teen B came in and told me.

By 5 pm it was pitch black in the house, so I got up and started looking for candles. We just had a power outage a week or three ago, wouldn't you have thought I would have gotten some candles set up? Of course, we did have candles set up -- the Advent candles. And of course, the Hanukkah candles. For just a moment I hesitated. It seemed sacrilegious to use them to light the house during a power failure. And then I thought, no, it's a mitzvah. I'm not sure that's the right term, actually. I looked it up just now and it might be Aseh Doche Lo Taseh instead -- where you break a commandment for a very good reason. But what I was thinking about was many years ago when I was visiting a very religiously Jewish friend from grad school, she gave me a ride on the Sabbath, even though it was against her beliefs to operate a motor vehicle on that day. I expressed concern, and she said it was a "???" -- I think it was a mitzvah, but maybe it was this other thing -- because I was stranded and desperately needed help (I was staying with her at her parents' house in Los Angeles in order to go to a conference).

Anyway, I lit the Advent candles, even the Christ candle that isn't supposed to be lit until Christmas Eve, and we burned them all night, until we went to bed, very early, around 9 pm I think, and we also burned a lot of Hanukkah candles. 

I think Wednesday was the day Rocket Boy brought home takeout for himself and the boys from Raising Cane's, and then that was the last day he went to work. He was already coughing by then, trying to hide it from his coworkers. I paid no attention to meals during the week. Either Monday or Tuesday I made broccoli cheddar casserole, using leftover rice, and then that was it. I had no appetite, so I assumed nobody else did either. For a couple of nights I had cereal or yogurt for dinner and they had whatever they had, don't know what.

Wednesday evening before we went to bed, we all got an email saying school was canceled the next day, due to lots of schools in the district having no power. 

Thursday morning the winds were quiet, but we were all still sick. My phone was down to 50% power or maybe less. I fed the cats, went back to bed. No cookies were baked. Nothing else was done by anybody. I read some emails on my phone from my neighbors -- they were charging their devices in their cars, or they were hanging out at the Barnes & Noble in Superior which had power -- but I couldn't imagine even walking to the car, much less driving it somewhere, or even turning it on to charge my phone. Around 1:45 pm the power came back on, to our great relief. I got up, plugged my phone into the charger (it was down to about 18% power), and went back to bed. Around 5 pm we got another email from the school district telling us that all schools would be closed on Friday too. So that was it for the school year! The kids will have to take their finals when school resumes in January. So ridiculous. 

Friday, we expected to lose power again, but we didn't. The wind blew like a son of a bitch all day long, including several gusts over 100 mph. One gust, which registered at 113 mph up at NCAR, snapped off the top of our neighbor's tall spruce tree, but I was too sick to get out of bed and go look at it. It fell into the yard of our rental house. He apparently got people out to cut it up with chainsaws right away, so the whole thing had vanished by the end of the day. Today we drove by and I finally got to see it -- the top half of the tree is just gone, like someone cut it off to make a giant Christmas tree. I think the rest of the tree will survive, though.

I should note that while all this was going on, the restoration work was being done next door, and I got phone call after phone call and text after text about this, each of them waking me up. The restoration guys brought a generator with them, so they could even work during the power outage. I still haven't seen it, but this is a picture that one of the tenants took. It looks fantastic. I told them they did not need to match the floor, not important, but I think they did a pretty good job anyway. And the drywall is in, and the painting is done, and the shelves are back in place, and as far as I know, the tenants have now reinstalled their washing machine and are back in business.

The only thing still undone is the closet in front of the hot water heater, but we can't put that back into place until the inspector comes, and he's not coming until January! So that's on hold. But otherwise we're done with this stupid nightmare. Assuming insurance pays the $23,000 we owe for mitigation and abatement. Still haven't heard about that. I paid for the restoration out of pocket.

Friday night was the first night I couldn't sleep. Every other night I just passed out gratefully, but Friday night my breathing and coughing kept me up. Basically, when I lay down, even heavily propped up with pillows, my exhalations would get noisier and noisier until I started to cough. I would sit up, cough deeply, throatily, violently, get some of the mucus out, and lie down again. And a moment later, the wheezing would resume, and then the coughing, and so on. I kept waking Rocket Boy up, so finally I went out to the living room to read, and eventually was able to sleep a little while sitting up. But it was a bad night. 

I will note, though, that when I got up to move to the living room, I had this little moment of clarity. I sat up in bed, looking over at Rocket Boy's digital alarm clock (I think it was 2:30 am, something like that), and I thought, I'm so lucky! We have power, none of our trees blew over, and someday we'll all feel better. 

So. Yesterday, Saturday, Rocket Boy and I ventured downtown to buy calendars at the Boulder Bookstore, something we do every year. We also went to Rocket Fizz, on the mall, to get a Secret Santa gift for RB to bring to work tomorrow. It was the first time either of us had tried to go anywhere or do anything since the illness started, and it felt scary. I can breathe, but a week of not moving had left me weak. We did what we needed to do as quickly as possible and then hurried home to lie down again.

I was going to make another batch of cookies yesterday, but ran out of strength. We did, however, go out to eat, at BJ's. Teen B didn't feel up to it, but we went with Teen A, who is the furthest along in recovery. I was OK as long as I didn't laugh or argue, both of which trigger coughing. For several days now my coughs have been really impressive, of the "coughing up a lung" variety, the kind of cough that makes people turn and stare. So it was very bad to do this in a restaurant. I was looking up something on my phone and somehow stumbled onto a bunch of videos of people's cats jumping on their beds and knocking things over, and I started to laugh -- and then cough. Teen A made me turn my phone upside down.

Saturday night I had to sleep in the living room again and it was awful. I wonder how long this phase will last? Today I tried gargling with warm salt water, which I hadn't done before. I doesn't seem like it would reach anywhere near where the problem is, but what would?

I was going to make cookies today, but the butter and egg are still sitting on the counter (coming to room temperature). What I should do, when I finish this, is make the dough and put it in the fridge, so I can make the cookies tomorrow. Do I even have the energy to do that?

We went out to Westminster to get a honeybaked ham this afternoon, because Rocket Boy could come with me (he has to go to work tomorrow, somehow). Teen B came too, which seemed like a good sign. He and I also went to Starbucks this morning, another sign that things might be returning to normal. Starbucks was almost empty, and there was no one else in the Honeybaked Ham store when we got there. I don't know when the long line starts -- maybe two days before Christmas? I remember when we used to stand in that line for an hour. We bought a coffee cake, a small ham, and a couple of bags of rolls, and it was $105.50, which might be the reason no one else was there.

But it's done. The tree still has no ornaments on it, but Rocket Boy worked on the lights this evening (sorry about the blurry pic) and I could hang an ornament or two on it now. I'll see. Maybe tomorrow. I've gotten caught up with laundry and dishes. I'm going to make soup tomorrow and we can have that Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday I'll make my sister's potato dish and we can have that with the ham (we have the same thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas). And we'll get through this. It'll be fine.

And now I am going to light the Hanukkah candles and the Advent candles (I think I have another set stashed away), make that cookie dough, and maybe hang an ornament or two. Merry Christmas!