[uhn-ri-len-ting]

adjective

  1. Not relenting; not yielding or swerving in determination or resolution, as of or from opinions, convictions, ambitions, ideals, etc.; inflexible: an unrelenting opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment.
  2. Not easing or slackening in severity: an unrelenting rain.
  3. Maintaining speed, effort, vigor, intensity, rate of advance, etc.: an unrelenting attack.

 

As much as I wish it wasn’t so, I am kind of a crybaby. While I can bear up under considerable opposition, I never do so with any discernible measure of stoicism. I’m tough in my way, but I figure if I have to suffer, I want credit, if not for bravery, than at least for endurance. Much like people who endure pain more readily when they curse aloud, my fortitude has volubility. I realize this approach doesn’t always evoke sympathy, but I doubt if I’m functionally capable of holding it all in, so I simply consider it the cost of doing business.

In case it was in any way unclear where this prelude was headed…

I’ve been some kind of sick since mid-January and I am motherfucking tired of it.

Partly to blame, I’m sure, is the transition from a small office environment into a cube landscape of considerable scope. In this setting there are dozens of people touching doorknobs, fingering keypads, and generally fouling the environment with their germiness.

In addition, Hodie has in her turn taken charge of a munchling as babysitter extraordinare several days a week. Since, as everyone knows, children are the bringers of pestilence and disease, mine has brought the sickness she’s contracted from the miniature microbe factory down on me at least twice since she started.

I am weary beyond expression of feeling like shit. Between the onset of gut-gripe that happens every four weeks and lasts for two, and the hideous cold/bronchitis/sinus blech I’ve had interspersed, I would give my bad right eye for a month or two where I just felt fine; where my running and gym schedule wasn’t interrupted by ailments of unpredictable severity; where I could work a week entire uninterrupted.

Such lofty prayers I voice, these days.