Yesterday was Blue Monday!  The abyss of all misery, when all your Christmas bills come in and your winter eczema has spread to places that can’t be scratched. Hopefully it will be uphill from here but I bet there will be more depressing days until spring comes and we pretend to be happy. I don’t have any pro tips for this, just to say that we are all in this together and this, too, shall pass.  I’m a hermit and hermits love misery so I’m not complaining one bit, especially since all the HBO shows have started their new seasons this month.  I am happier than a pig in shit, which is an expression I hate but is relevant to this post.

Last week I had The Flu.  I’m hardly ever sick and if I am, it is self-induced (hangover) or milked out (lady-time cramps).  It took about 3 days for me to fully understand what was happening.  I barfed on a Monday and wondered, am I sick?  It’s probably just that pesky norovirus that is going around and is super-contagious so don’t think scarfing down tubs of probiotic yogurt is going stop your orifices from exploding.  This virus is insidious and is spread through the “faecal dust” (it’s the British spelling!  Doesn’t that sound better shit residue?)  that inevitably ends up on your greasy iPhone whether you wash your hands or not. The flu shot doesn’t work with the norovirus either. And it does not care whether or not you gulp down oil of fucking oregano.  And please stop posting stupid things on Facebook that help “boost your immune system.”  The only thing that keeps you from getting sick is hard liquor, it kills the germs proper.  It’s Juiceless January, and that is why I got sick.

I got a strange headache on Tuesday, and of course I thought I was stroking out. This is my ongoing fear so I know the symptoms: numbness, scattered thoughts, and loss of balance.  Seriously, if it happens you have to run to the emergency room.  But my motor functions were in tact and I could smile evenly and recite the alphabet so I waited it out.  The headache soon turned into sinus congestion.  On Wednesday it got worse.

Then on Thursday, things got achey breaky.  AM I SICK? I don’t even know, I had forgotten what it was like. I think I had the flu in 2005, it was when I was living in that fog that lasted 6 years.  Maybe it is all imaginary.  Is this real life or is it Stephen King’s “The Stand” coming into fruition?

But then on Friday, it became clear.  Me so sick! It is “The Stand!” How come other people are still alive? Why are they still talking about the Golden Globes and laughing on the View?  Don’t they know there is a pandemic going on? I have to admit I was in a panic because the kids were at school and I was alone. No one takes care of mama when she is sick. I want soup and ginger ale!  I couldn’t get warm enough, then I got hot, then I had to pee or whatever that urgency was, then I got up and didn’t even make it to the toilet.  Then I had to change, rinse and repeat.  I went through 6 pairs of pyjama bottoms!  Jesus.  By the afternoon, I settled down, let’s just ride this thing like it was a psychedelic trip. Aside from the aches, chills, and having to constantly clench my sphincter super-tight because it just wasn’t trustworthy, I actually had a good time.

All my chakras were a-buzz. That third eye thing (intuitive powers) was tingling constantly, I think it was opening up and letting all the spirits guide me. The blue, green, yellow, and orange areas were burning and churning. In the meantime, my root chakra was wailing louder than usual, like I could do anything about it in my condition, so I put an ice pack on it.  Shut up, Muladhara, just settle down.  The flu is just an out of control chakra party.

By the end of the day my voice was all raspy and when my daughter came home, I could caw out orders:  “I want mac ‘n’ cheese!”  I was so delirious, I called her “Mommy.”

I slept like a bear for 12 hours and had epic dreams that were so entertaining, I didn’t want to wake up.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with the plot but I had a really vivid dream about these two gaping sphincters, Kim and Kanye, both of whom I don’t really give two rear root chakra expulsions about until the dream:

I think it was because while I was laying in bed all day, I was on every gossip website so I know everything Kimye and Taylor Swift (what is her problem? I need to take her under my soft, downy wing and stroke her on top of her Sahasrara and tell her everything will be okay) and of course I practically have a PhD in Lindsay Lohan but that was from before the flu.  Anyway my Kimye dream was really cool and they were my neighbours in my Sunset Boulevard mansion and I loved them. I even kept thinking about them for an entire weekend afterwards and then I had an epiphany that probably had formed originally from my open third eye chakra: These two are actually a really good couple.  Normally I hate human couplings as I find them sad and pathetic like you always know there is one who can’t sort their own socks and they need the other one to do it for them.  If you watch out for body language, the one who looks desperate is always the sock sorter, like these two specimens, dubbed “Leaddie”:

Ugh, they are The Worst. She is always desperately glueing her body onto his and he always has that smug smirk on his face while she always looks hysterical.  How do they even see each other with those squinty eyes?  Not only does she sort his socks but she also probably does other hardcore things like trims his nose hairs and squeezes his back zits.  Shudder.

Kimye clearly lovingly sort each other’s socks, proverbially speaking, obviously they have servants to do that sort of thing.  If you google them up, there is not a single bad picture of them together.  So sweet, it warms the cockles of my heart chakra.  I don’t care what y’all say, I hope they get married and have lots of babies, THEY CAN CALL ONE OF THEM KJANGO! The K is silent!

Still a little delirious, obviously.

I felt much better on Saturday but! The thing that has been bugging me all week is that issue of all cable tv turning from analog to digital.  I have those digital converters still in their boxes (for the extra tv’s that don’t have the delux converter) but haven’t installed them yet! There is an ominous banner on the Peachtree station saying that Rogers customers might lose the station on January 21 because it is going digital!  Peachtree is how I placate myself to sleep with double episodes of Seinfeld and Family Guy every night!  I will die without Peachtree…no, seriously, I am a creature of habit and ritual.  I am the one who defines insanity:

That is the stupidest quote ever, by the way.  If you do something over and over again, of course something will inevitably give up, break down, shrink, grow, burn, melt, or prolapse.  So yes, keep doing what you’re doing over and over and change will come, crazy ho.

Anyway, I need Peachtree to fall asleep, which is the result I am looking for, so those converter boxes better get put on those supplementary tv’s this weekend or someone might have a nervous breakdown.  So on Saturday, Evangeline set up the boxes as she is the family technician.

Of course nothing goes smoothly in this flailing first world household.  First of all, it is a dumb little box taking up space that you have to put on your tv and it only works with a dumb extra little wand that you now have to worry about slipping couch cushions.

The converter in the upstairs living room tv actually works to change the channels but when you turn it off with the new remote, the tv turns itself on again a few seconds later.  You have to manually turn the tv off, who can live with that?

The remote in my bedroom doesn’t work at all.  I only get Channel 3!  Peachtree is on 47!

The one in Freddy’s room has made the entire tv screen turn to snow.

So I call Rogers.  My entire shameless first world happiness is bundled in the hands of one overlord:  Cell phone, internet, home phone, and beloved cable.  Normally I am nice to service people but I have so many issues with Rogers, I have to channel my most beeyutchiest of personas because otherwise I will start to cry and I’ve already beaten that dead horse tactic to ground.  But I need a service man to hook these things up, not to be guided over the phone like a dolt to plug and unplug everything, because we have already done that OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH THE SAME RESULT, so I got all huffy and indignant until they finally caved: “We will send out a service man on Sunday between 2 and 5.” Yes!  Help is on the way!

My entire house is rigged with dollar store cable cords from when I first moved in and the house was a triplex and I wanted to unify all the cable instead of paying 3 times the amount for each outlet.  When I have had issues in the past, the service men that came pretended not to notice, and I know this because they have said: “I’m going to pretend I don’t see this amateur wiring job with pirate cables” and they fix whatever it is and go on their grumpy way.  What if this time I get busted and they discover I actually have that 5th cable outlet on the third floor? And I’m totally not even going to mention the 6th one that my tenant has on the first floor.  What if they charge me more money?  I will totally lose my shit and get a satellite dish and live miserably and HBO-less.

At 4:30, the service man arrived and oh, my, God, was he ever cute!  First he put on plastic bag booties on his giant boots so he wouldn’t track any more faecal dust than necessary…so sweet!  He came upstairs and was unfazed by Betty’s asshole incessant barking and calmly went about his business.  The first tv was an easy fix, the wand just needed to be reprogrammed manually because the brand/model of tv didn’t quite match the one in the guide.

The ones in my bedroom and Freddy’s room were more perplexing.  While he was working, he explained all about cable, analog versus digital, and how one bad tv could affect an entire neighbourhood’s cable flow.  I’m not sure if he was getting at anything as in my tv is the local cable cock block or he was just telling cable lore, I was too busy falling in love.  He kept having to go back into the car to get things, and I followed him around.  I swear if he brought in his laundry, I would have happily sorted his socks.  Ugh, yes, he had a wedding ring on.

As it turned out, those pirate wires were not fit for fussy digital tv signals, so he re-wired everything with proper cable, “Analog signals will go through anything,” he explained, “And I’m going to change these connectors because they’re not good either.”  I am soaking wet watching this happen.

It took him over an hour to fix everything, I didn’t want to him to leave! We had a little sparkly connection, he laughed at my jokes! That hardly ever happens! Take off your plastic booties and stay, Cable Man, I wanted to say out loud but didn’t, don’t worry. When he did finally pack up, it was one of those prolonged goodbyes where it was “Goodbye, thank you, you’re the best,” “You’re welcome, no, you’re the best,” “No, you are the best,” “No, you” it went on, ad nauseam, if you were the fly on the wall, you would have barfed. Sigh.

At least I have Peachtree.