doc_destructo

Maybe it's the 18 hour day.  Maybe it's that I trimmed my beard Sunday.  Maybe it's that my cap is ratty and tattered around the bill and closer to maroon in color rather than black.

But I didn't recognize my reflection in the mirror a few minutes ago.

It kinda resembled me in some details, but it just didn't look like what I've been seeing for the past 9 years (when I essentially decided shaving was too much work).  That's just crazy and cliched and I'm not sure I like it.

I'm still a few years away from 30, dammit!

Okay, subconscious.  Seriously.  What the hell?

Wednesday morning, I'm waking up at 6:30am so I can prep Little Dude's pre-school clothes and finish his newsbook drawing.  Nothing major, I do this every morning regardless of whether I sleep or not.  Only I wake up with a splitting headache, almost as bad as the killer migraine from when I was 18 (which is the only pain I've ever experienced to wake my ass up out of a dead sleep).

Or so I think.

Turns out, I wake up again, this time with the alarm beeping and no headache.  Bleary red numbers tell me it's 6:30am.  For a minute or two after I slap the alarm off, I sit in bed and check to make sure I'm not going to need to take some Excedrin.  Nada.  So I continue with my regularly scheduled prep work.  Once kiddo and ne_today are on their way out the door, I clean up the kitchen, take out the garbage, yada yada.  Just my chores before I try to get some shut-eye and resync up with my night shift cycle.  I work an oh-so enviable 6pm - 6am shift every couple days (with alternating Fri-Sun's off) and this time it's Wednesday and Thursday.  I'm in bed by 10:30am and all is well.  That is, until I wake up around 3pm with a really scratchy throat, dry and painful sinuses and what I suspect might be a fever.

Or so I think.

4pm rolls around and with it my alarm clock.  I sit up expecting low-grade torture only to find nothing's wrong.  Only I have no way of knowing, because this is the second time that day that I've thought I was ill.  I spend the next 20 minutes in what could probably equate to the lamest acid trip ever.  I feel okay, but my brain somehow insists that I can't be.

And that's how my day started.