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February 7, 1997
I entered the school to the sounds of gongs and cymbals and rattles and a chant of "Gung Hay Fat Choy". Mrs. Gardiner's class was celebrating Chinese New Year by parading around the school from classroom to classroom scaring the evil spirits with noisemakers and dragon masks. My headache was already starting to fade and I think the dragons scared the rest of it away. The kids got report cards today. There didn't seem to be as many pickups today as on a usual Friday and more of them were Dads. I still feel like the oldest person there.
We watched tv (Muppet Babies) and went to Mrs. Reed's for piano without incident. While Elizabeth was having her lesson I read Andrea Aunt Chip and the Triple Creek Dam Affair, a wonderful book about books. Triple Creek is a place where everyone watches tv all the time. They've lost the knowledge of how to read. The library has been torn down and the books are used to prop up houses and build a dam. The protagonist gets Aunt Chip to teach him to read. The other kids want to learn too. Soon the kids all want more books. They're scrounging them from other uses all over town. The protagonist spots a copy of Moby Dick and pulls it out of the dam...
For once there was no black ice or freezing drizzle to survive on the way home. Such a refreshingly uneventful drive home is just what the doctor ordered.
I'm still exhausted and feel the chills and fever sneaking back toward me a little. I hate being tired. I get into this guilt trip of I must've done something wrong it's my own damn fault and how will I ever be able to function as an adult in the real world if I'm this tired wait a minute I am an adult in the real world...
I guess I had this notion that if only I took some time off from work and slept for a year I would finally get past the burnout/exhaustion and that would mean I'd never be tired again. Wrong. Something about chills, fever, and vomiting makes a middle-aged woman tired. Yes it does.