Periodic Diseases

So I looked at my phone this morning when I woke up and saw that it was September first.  Yay, September…  I signed up for NaBloPoMo this month and so I plan on writing one post every day.  I’m hoping this will bring more people in to read my blog.  Let’s see what happens!  September’s theme is “Art,” so I’m hoping to incorporate that some way every day.  Today I’m posting a favorite painting.  Tomorrow, unless I come up with something else, I’ll tell you all about when I was an art major.

The other thing that’s happening in September is recruitment.  This is my first year helping as an alumna, so I am both sad and a bit relieved, but I am really looking forward to it.  And, one of the things I’m looking forward to most is not getting sick!

Every year in college, I’ve had a periodic disease.  Freshman year, it was the flu and the first time I caught it was the week before finals.  This was the worst time ever to get sick!  Honestly, how can anyone have a good semester when they can’t study for finals?  It took me forever to learn verb conjugation in my foreign language correctly because of it too.  I caught it again after recruitment in January.  Really, it may have been the same one.  There was a blizzard that year, so I was out in the snow a lot.  I had to drive to work, go sledding, and all sorts of things.  Oh well, at least I got the flu out of the way for the next three years.

The next year we had Informal Recruitment in the fall and Formal Recruitment in January.  I don’t actually think I had an illness this year (except for a cold, but I have colds all the time, so I’ve gotten used to it), but I know I scraped up a knee during or after both recruitments.  Fall semester, I fell on some concrete due to a freak accident.  Spring semester, I slipped on some ice.  My entire right knee is pretty much scar tissue these days.  Back in June, I was hiking up the Flatirons and on the way down, I slipped on loose gravel and fell.  It took a few weeks to heal, but somehow managed to still look ghastly when I showed up for work in the middle of June.  After healing, it didn’t hurt at all, though, until a filming crew at my summer job made me sit in a paddle boat for an hour.  Those boats don’t paddle anyway, but combine that with campers who don’t paddle and you wind up with an injured knee.  I had to ice it for hours, it was really, really unfortunate.  But, now I know not to paddle in a paddle boat for an hour.

Junior year was my favorite, as far as periodic diseases go.  I was able to enjoy laryngitis that made me sound like a prepubescent boy and a smoker all at once.  The laryngitis always started off as a cold.  I don’t know if this happens normally, but it was enjoyable to spend a week with a runny nose and feel horrible and then be fine, but sound horrid.  That happens to me all the time.  People always worry about my health once I’m finally on my way to a speedy recovery.  I just looked it up on Wiki, by the way, and a viral infection often causes laryngitis.  I also had laryngitis this summer, but it was from screaming and cheering during mini Greek Week at work.  It wasn’t actually Greek Week, but that’s what it reminded me of.  I really don’t mind getting laryngitis from screaming, because I like to think it makes me hard-core, or something like that.

Senior year was the worst, on par with the flu.  Both semesters I caught a cold that became a horrible upper respiratory infection.  The part I remember hating most was the eye drops, fever, and quarantining myself.  Therefore, I’m hoping that I don’t have to deal with this again this year, or ever again.  If I never have another upper respiratory infection, I will be eternally happy.  At this point in time, it’s the little things that matter.

So anyway, that is my big goal.  I’m hoping with everything I have that I won’t be getting sick this year.  I won’t have the stress of staying up late and waking up early, working after the recruitment day is over, then setting up, or running around frantically in preparation.  I do have the drive up to school when I decide to go up to help.  I might go every day, but I haven’t decided yet.  Definitely Saturday for sure.  In any case, with the fact that I can go off and do my own thing (even go out or see boys since I’m no longer subject to no boys/no booze during recruitment) or go home and rest.  But, yup, that’s the plan!  I’m hoping that maybe this surgery will tide my body over from wanting a periodic disease.

So, as for the art part of this blog, here is one of my favorite paintings, “The Starry Night” by Van Gogh.  I love the bold strokes and the color contrasts.  I love that the church is in the center with its high steeple.  I could have seen it when I went to New York, but alas, it wasn’t in the game plan.  Anyway, I’ll just let you all admire it.

The Starry Night