I am still unwell. Today makes a solid two weeks. I used to get these flu-cold-sinus-respiratory things every winter that would last pretty much all winter and then I got a bit older, gained some weight, learned to deal with my depression better, started getting lots of exercise and eating better and I stopped getting those awful things. For a few years, I was more like a normal person, with a normal immune system and when I caught a cold, I was down for a day or two, then okay again.
Then I had kids.
Bad eating habits (namely, skipping meals due to forgetting to eat in the middle of a busy day), lack of sleep (to understate the matter in the extreme) and no exercise but unhealthy lifting habits have rendered me sickly again, it would seem (though I haven’t lost the weight I put on initially–a good thing). I get these hang-on-forever illnesses. And I don’t have time for long illnesses. I have children!
Yesterday, I was feeling hungry, tired, sore-throated, feverish and grouchy. At one point, I looked up and Nat was doing something under the dining room table and Selina was fussing and looking somewhat victimized, but I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on.
“Nat!” I snapped, crossing the room in a small fury. But, finding nothing but two kids on the floor picking up the morning’s breakfast crumbs for a mid-morning snack (yuck), I stopped in my tracks and went “oh.”
Nat looked at me rather seriously and said “what, Mama Shannon? You’re angry?”
“No, I’m not angry, Nat,” I told her.
Nat didn’t believe me and insisted “but you said: ” and here she made the scowlingest scowl I ever saw, wrinkling her forehead and grimacing in frustration.
I assured Nat that I indeed “said” that, but everything was fine now.
I really need to get over this stupid thing.
While bedridden, I have become addicted to LibraryThing. I started by entering just the books in the immediate bedside vicinity (well, actually just the ones I’ve read most recently), but today I entered my favorite cookbooks and the books on the easiest bookshelf to see from the office desktop computer. Then I took the laptop back to bed and entered tags and whatnot for all of those books.
I am also seriously considering getting the LibraryThing scanner that you plug into your computer and use to read the barcode to enter your books. It’s not that hard to type in the titles but often a zillion books will come up and it would be nice to do it by ISBN without having to type in the ISBN, which would entail reading teeny numbers and typing them in slowly (if you’re me) and wrong half the time (if you’re me).
So! 42 books down, probably about 1500 to go! I will be busy for some time on this new little time-suck. It’s a geek’s dream come true. Do join me.
Oh, and Nat’s first review is up!
I absolutely love LibraryThing. I did buy the “cuecat” and it made a world of difference. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to work for me, but if I unplug it and plug it back in, it seems to go to town, so probably it’s just something us older, less computer savvy people don’t know. Without the scanner, I agree it’s much easier to find the correct editions by ISBN. Maybe go to an office supply, or teacher’s supply store and get a magnifying sheet. They seem to work well too. Anyway, have fun! And mostly I hope you get to feeling better soon. Keeping up with small ones when you’re low energy is a real challenge.