today's news

* my hives are slowly receding. my cooties seem to have plateaued.

* in related news, mom has now been struck down by cooties.

* this morning, i dropped off my down-payment cheque with the lawyer, and signed all my condo papers. all that's left is to get the keys on friday.

* no, scratch that. there's a TON of stuff left. figuring out insurance. arranging my cable and internet hookups. painting and painting and painting and painting. for starters.

* further to the above, my boss imparted an invaluable piece of information on me this evening: prime the popcorn ceiling before painting. apparently, if a popcorn ceiling hasn't been painted previously, a water-based ceiling paint (like the giant vat i bought) will be absorbed into the popcorniness and cause it all to crumble right off. so, evidently, i will be buying a giant vat of primer this weekend, and spending much more time than anticipated tackling the ceilings.

hive got some news

today, i spent the day wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck sweater made of hives and cooties. the rash broke out -- all across my chest, neck, throat, shoulders and upper arms -- last night, and only became more pronounced this morning.

so, i booked an appointment with dr. textbook, who diagnosed: a rather extensive case of hives. likely brought on by a combination of stress, the cold virus (i am once again FULLY ENCOOTIFIED) and a very pooped immune system.

GOOD TIMES.

i was here

tonight, as i was purging old press kits and magazines, i realized – with some degree of sadness and regret – that, amid the whirlwind, i'd completely forgotten to take photos of my current apartment before i started packing it up to move. photos of how it looked when i was living here. photos of it being lived in.

now, its shelves are half-empty, boxes are stacked around, and i can feel myself slowly disappearing from the space.

tomorrow morning...

... it's condo-visit time.

as part of my purchase agreement, i get two pre-closing visits to measure, doublecheck things and make sure the previous owner hasn't, you know, trashed the place. ;-)

so, with tape measures and note paper in hand, YB, mom, my real estate agent and i will head to my new home and set about inspecting it closely.

it'll be the first time i really REALLY look at it, spend time in the space and see what i've bought. and i'm really REALLY hoping i find only good things.

why i will not sleep tonight

earlier, i realized i haven't prepaid nearly enough in taxes for 2013, which means i will be writing the government a much-much-bigger-than-i-expected cheque come late april.

it also means the financial cushion i thought i'd have (after making my condo down payment + paying for all the purchase- and moving-related expenses) is a lot flatter than i thought it would be.

things i am looking forward to

* walking in the well-treed neighbourhood, especially in the fall and winter

* visiting the brownie lady down the street

* using the charming, renovated library

* exploring my options at the new community centre

* having my own washer and dryer, and doing laundry in my own home

* planting basil and chives in pots and growing them on the little balcony

* morning sun

* walking to work along the most expensive street in the city

* air conditioning in summer!

* playing pool in the building's snooker room :-D

* not having ANYONE living above me

* having a dedicated office... with four walls AND a door

* tons of storage space

* living among grown-ups

* putting money into something i own (or, as my real-estate agent put it: "into the house bank")

* strolling to all the shops on bayview

* taking a big, empty space and making it mine

* the QUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

things i will miss

* living within a 25-minute walk of the centre of the city

* my neighbourhood, with its multitude of old churches and schools

* being an eight-minute walk from two subway stations

* claire on 9, francia on 2 and cliff – who's in his 80s and has lived here for more than 40 years – on 5

* living next door to the chief of police

* the sound of streetcars passing outside

* the smell of june wafting in my windows

* the huge, fancy loblaws... which was only recently made fancy

* my aesthetically perfect address (the actual letters and numbers, i mean)

* the stripe on my living-room wall

* snow walks along the beltline (which, technically, i can still take... but they'll require a bus ride there and back)

* the light in my living room on fall evenings

* the sound of the timothy eaton church bells

* my office nook

* the open shelves in my open kitchen, and the built-in book nook that runs under the counter

* the retro tiles, and high ceiling, in my bathroom

* having a ceiling light in the bedroom

* radiant heat

* smooth ceilings

* my wall of windows in the living room, and the one in the bedroom

* my view... my beautiful, beautiful view. i will miss that most of all.

things i will not miss

* my upstairs neighbours and their incessant thudding and thumping and banging and clanging

* the neighbour one floor up and one door over, who randomly BLASTS top-40 music for 15-minute stretches

* the smell of weed on the 2nd floor

* not being able to control the heat in my home

* not having air conditioning

* the drafty windows, with their cracked caulking and filthy grooves

* the cracked window ledges, where condensation pools and soaks the bottom of my blinds when it's very cold out

* the leaky bathtub faucet

* the off-centre light fixture above the sink

* the fact that, if i turn on the hot water in the kitchen, i have to run the cold water for a few seconds when i'm done or else the faucet drips

* having to schelp my laundry to my parents' house... and back

* being at the mercy of the management company's idiotic decisions

* CONSTRUCTION NOISE, construction workers, construction dust

* that weird bug that always finds its way into my place every june and flies out at me in the darkness

palette

fun thing #58 about the new condo? picking paint colours.

and then my body cried, "UNCLE!"

not surprisingly (to me), i appear to be coming down with a cold. i woke up at about 2am with an inexplicably sore left side of my throat. it had been totally fine when i went to bed just four hours earlier but, suddenly, swallowing hurt. i told myself it was a side effect of having walked to and from work yesterday, that i must have breathed in too much of the dusty-with-road-salt air and that the air had irritated my sinuses and throat. i drank some water and went back to bed, but didn't sleep.

i tossed and turned until 6:30am, repeatedly checking on my throat by swallowing. yep, still sore. it improved a little when i finally got up at 7 and had breakfast... but, a few hours later, i knew it wasn't leaving.

as i say, i'm not surprised. i've been going full-tilt for the past two weeks. i haven't slept properly at all and, many nights, wind up with just three or four hours of fitful sleep. i've been working long-ish hours, exercising, walking back and forth from the office... in short: my body has been under a LOT of physical and mental stress.

add to that a slew of über-germy colleagues who insist on coming in to work while sick, coughing and sneezing and spreading the plague from cubicle to cubicle. i'd been dosing up on vitamins and bathing in hand sanitizer but, with a fatigued body and mind, my immune system evidently threw up a white flag to the tsunami of cooties.

so, my body is sending me a message i can't ignore. loud and clear. TAKE IT EASY.

now, i don't feel sick. i just have a sore throat. for now. the normal progression of a cold for me is a sore throat (a day or two), followed by sinus congestion (three or four days), followed by a cough (eight thousand years). it's not usually until day two or three that i start to feel like i'm wearing a onesie made of lead and mucous.

BUT... i'm doing my best to recharge my system today and tomorrow (and, probably, monday... when i'll work from home) in the hopes of shortening the length and severity of whatever this is. i'm taking plenty of vitamin C and zinc, and downing a ton of fluids. i've also been trying to kick the sore throat to the curb with a tincture of cayenne, turmeric, honey and warm water that i swallow every 15 minutes. thus far, the results are middling at best. every website i've read says, "stick with it! it might take several hours!", but i'm now entering hour three. we'll see.

of course, there's also nyquil, which i may use tonight. not a full dose -- i'm not sick yet -- but enough to create that warm, fuzzy haze that spells S-L-E-E-P. because, i think, i need that more than anything at this point. fingers crossed i wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed and sore-throat-free!