Sick and Sad and Stormy Weather

I'm not sick, I refuse to be sick, I can't be sick, but I'll say this: I've felt better.  I have been fighting back a headache all day, my nose isn't quite running, but it's walking briskly. I'm buried so deep at work I don't know if I'll ever dig out. One of my closest colleagues and grant collaborators collapsed in her office last week.  Brain bleed, just like killed my mother. My colleague and I are quite similar in that we both work like field hands and we take our work seriously. Luckily, she also has a wicked and subversive sense of humor, which is why I enjoy working with her. The EMTs carried her out of building on a gurney and rushed her to the hospital in Medford. From there she was airlifted to Portland. That was the last I heard and it can't be good.

Here's what I know for damn sure: I do not want to drop dead in the office. I do not want to work myself to death. 

As is probably obvious by now, my health is not all that's bothering me. 55 years old and I still let what people do or say (or, don't do or say) get so deep under my skin that it keeps me awake all night long. I walk the floors, fretting, ruminating, writing sad bastard songs that no-one will ever hear:

    Such a fine line we walk

    Such a lot of nonsense we talk

    Till my head is reeling

    With excess of feeling

    The words you withhold cut me to the bone

    Wish that I'd left well enough alone

Will I ever reach a place of calm acceptance, of complete detachment?  Will I ever grow the fuck up? Born and bred in the briar patch, B'rer Fox. Born and bred in the briar patch.

In honor of my crappy mood, here's Ethel Waters singing Stormy Weather. Lena Horne's version is better known, but I loves me some Ethel:

   Can't go on

   All I have in life is gone

   Stormy weather

   Since my man and I ain't together

   Keeps raining all the time.

No, it's not quite that bad, but you get my drift.

And, since I'm in such a sad bastard state of mind: 

   And I find it kind of funny

   I find it kind of sad

   The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

   I find it hard to tell you

   I find it hard to take

   When people run in circles it's a very very

   mad world
   mad world.

It's been a long time since I've dreamed of dying, or flying, or anything at all. You have to sleep to dream. 

   ...To sleep, perchance to dream. 

   Ay there's the rub

   For in that sleep of death

   What dreams may come...

Never you mind Hamlet. I'm in no great rush to shuffle off this mortal coil. But, I'd very much like to feel better. I'm tired of feeling bad.