Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I am feeling extremely whiny, near trantrum-ish, definitely ready to sulk, today. Knee pain bad enough that I can barely walk with 40mg of codeine and a gram and a half of ibuprofen in me, that alone I might deal with just by being stubborn about it. My left arm feeling like it's going to fall off -- and that if it did so that might be a blessing if it meant the pain would stop -- from using the cane to compensate for the knee, that along with lower back pain showing up near the end of the long trek back from the kitchen, I would just take as a sign that I needed more meds if I hadn't already taken as much as I feel safe taking. Those plus the frustration of knowing (a) my bandmates are playing a concert right now and I'm not there with them, (b) I'm not going to be able to show up for the dance I'm responsible for providing a band for, (c) I already missed a performance last night and a dance I was more worried about having musicians for this morning, and (d) after missing out on Thanksgiving festivities I'm now also not getting to see a bunch of friends at Darkover ... plus the cough coming back (and I'm not sure whether adding dextromethorphan on top of codeine is a good idea, so I'm trying to manage it with just hot soup and menthol/horehound cough drops) ... and, well, somewhere in that list my ability-to-cope threshold got exceeded. I just want to cry -- no, I just want to turn my brain off and not-be for a while, escape this fucking day, this weekend, this illness, this reality, and hope I can be more philosophical about it when I wake up again and the "I'm letting people down" is no longer present-tense and the pain is back to merely annoying-and-exhausting levels. But I'm not sure how to do that safely. So I'll just drink my soup, crawl under the covers, and feel sorry for myself until I recover enough to distract myself with television or an e-book, or manage to escape from my own brain into sleep.

I hate missing out on the fun of performing -- and in front of a bunch of friends, at that. I hate feeling like I've let my bandmates down. I hate feeling like I've let the audience down. (Oh, the band can get by without me and put on a good show, but having any of us absent diminishes the effect, and this was already a less-than-the-full-band gig.) All of that is a bigger deal, emotionally, than the physical pain and illness that are keeping me home. I thought I could cover those feelings with enough reminders that illness is illness and there's just not much I can do differently right now, but it's not working. I'm frustrated and miserable and want to scream at the universe that it''s all JUST NOT FAIR and I deserve a do-over because I'm special and realities like illness aren't allowed to take away my Darkover weekend.

I'm not especially worried about the Regency ball because I have a pretty good idea who'll be there for it, and that bunch doesn't need much leading -- I get the word out and get sheet music to people, and when the dance starts I usually mostly just blend into the rythm section -- so as long as enough people brought last year's music with them, that should go okay. I still feel like I really ought to be there though.

I had a lot of 'maybe's for the Playford dance -- somebody please tell me that enough musicians showed up for that and it went smoothly?