Mutterings, Meat, and Memories

This is another one of those days where I kneel in effusive appreciation of feeling okay. Not good, not happy, just...well, fine. Conscious. In the state where Nyquil did its appointed job last night, and Dayquil is propping me up until I can collapse tonight after class.

Sometimes I think that if I were healthier, I would stop appreciating the feeling of not having a headache...I would take it for granted, and as a result wouldn't enjoy the lack of pain as much as I do now. My head started hurting on Tuesday morning around 10 AM, and didn't stop until about 10 last night. Adam spent the day asking me in worried tones if I wanted him to cancel the gaming session, but being that I caused him to miss the session on Sunday, I didn't want to be a complete bastard; I spent the evening muttering shut up shut up shut up! to the character I was playing, a disturbingly cheerful and strident 11-year-old, and caught 30-second naps on Dan's shoulder whenever I could. I understand that I may have been a bit short with people afterward in my headlong rush for bed, darkness, and silence, and I apologize for that. Yesterday at one point, I felt like someone was tugging on the outer edge of my right eyelid, stretching the skin tight like we used to do when we pretended to be Asians during my non-politically correct childhood. I've become a headache gourmet over the past few years; there's the sinus one where it feels like someone is very slowly scraping a groove in the notch at the top of my eye socket, and the migraine where I feel like the side of my head has gotten all squishy, and the pain follows this thin path down through my body, all the way down into my stomach, and the gigantic head-encompassing one that starts as a deceptive ache and stiffness in my neck muscles.

But the headache is gone, and the cough is diminishing, and my appetite's back, just in time for my anticipated Burger King meal tonight on campus. This wouldn't usually be cause for celebration, but it's not Adam's favorite fast food, and for some reason most of the ones in the Pittsburgh area have closed. A nice flamebroiled double cheeseburger is my reward in the two hours between when I leave work and have to be in class. I've always associated Burger King with college. When I was little and my dad was going to night school at Youngstown State University, we would sometimes go over with him when he had to do library research. The college was a magical place to me; there was a brightly lit pedestrian bridge that went over the road, and a huge library with 4 or 5 floors, and we always went there when it was dark. Everything seemed quiet and studious. There was a Burger King by the bookstore, and we ate there a few times; hence, the association.

Whenever I start thinking my current hectic schedule is tough, I think about my dad. He started out at Penn State back in the 60s, but had to leave when my grandpa got sick and the family business was imperiled. He left school just in time to get shipped out to Vietnam. When he came back, he got married, got a job, got a house, and adopted two kids. Eventually he decided to go back for his bachelor's degree in engineering. He spent twelve and a half years working full time and then driving more than an hour round trip to go to class--and in his free time, he and my mom raised two kids, something I can't even imagine doing now. I was 9 or so when he graduated, and I remember being so proud of him. Now that I have an idea of what it took to get that far--even a rudimentary idea, because he was still doing so much more than I am now--I'm even prouder. Twelve and a half years. That takes a level of persistence I can't imagine. And in that time, he even had time to spare to buy his kids Burger King, and raise a daughter who thought that both he and what he was doing were so cool that she fell in love with the college atmosphere in general, and to this day, is working as hard as she can to become a part of it.