What I Should Have Done

What I SHOULD have done, of course, was to google bookcase easiest to assemble BEFORE ordering a bookcase from Amazon. The easy 20-minute assembly process I finally finished today was brutally difficult, days long, and familiar. And if I hadn't had the hammer and screwdrivers I bought because a recent conversation with my brother reminded me that I really needed some tools already -- it would have been impossible. The moral of the story is, I still need more bookcases, and I'll research which ones are for us non-home-improvement types before I order.

I didn't assemble this one perfectly over the past several days. I'd assembled enough bookcases more or less exactly like this one 

 

to know that I wasn't going to assemble this one perfectly. But I may have come closer to actually following all of the instructions correctly this time than ever before.

Strangely enough, though, I hadn't assembled enough of them to realize that I should never, ever put myself through it again. For some reason, it took one more. Well, learning takes what it takes. Maybe that's why they call it learning. Hmm.

mee r sik munkee

I went into the ER Friday morning, was moved to another ward on Saturday, and discharged Monday afternoon, yesterday. What's wrong with me? They don't know, exactly. The leading theory is that it's an unknown virus, and the hope is that I'll recover within a few more days, as one would normally do from the flu. I was discharged because the hospital didn't know how to treat me, since they haven't yet figured out what's wrong (they will do more tests and keep trying to figure it out), and also because of the concern that I could get additional infection in the hospital and get worse.

I'm concerned that my home environment may have made me sick, and may make me sicker now that I'm back home, and finally, in the hospital, I started telling people about that concern, and I've been put in touch with some people who may be about to evaluate my living space and offer advice about what needs to be done. I've seen homes that were cleaner, and I've seen homes that were dirtier and the residents didn't seem to care. (Maybe they just hadn't admitted yet, like I didn't admit until I was hospitalized, that they were overwhelmed and didn't know what to do and is there anybody who can help?)

I don't want to get into the more gross details about my home here on the blog. I just don't. You're welcome. I just want to say: I wish I had mentioned to someone that I was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do a while ago. Despite what the libertarians say, nobody ever gets through life all on their own, and there's no shame in admitting you need help.

One thing the hospital visit made very clear, although I already knew it, is that I need to be around people more. There were hospital staff around 24 hours a day, and many of them were very friendly, and some of them I liked very much, and now here I am back at home alone except for the Internet. I need to get well and then get out of the house and mix it up. Probably in that order.