Under the Weather

Since I received my acceptance letter from UC Denver I've been working hard to get all my paperwork for financial aid done. I did my FAFSA and have completed my form for a reconsideration of income, since I 1) was laid off and 2) don't plan to work full-time while going to school. Hopefully this will make my first semester's tuition quite a bit less. I'm trying to estimate what I'll need in loans to pay for school and survive without working 40 hours a week... I just don't want to overdo it my first semester and screw myself out of grad school. I did find out that, in order to be a full-time student, I'm only required to take 2 classes (6 credits) per semester. I'm thinking I'll start at two and work part-time, see how it goes, and take it from there. I'm getting more excited about it - I just have to survive retail till then!

Speaking of surviving retail, today was my first Black Friday ever as an employee. I'd worked Black Friday at Caribou before, but it's so different at a coffee shop (especially one that's not at a mall) than an actual retail shop. It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected, to be honest: I got to B&BW this morning at 6 and worked the register till 11 (which FLEW by, because it was five hours of non-stop ringing!) then another couple hours working to replenish the stock up front. The most surprising part was that people were being nice - like REALLY nice! I didn't have one customer get short or mean with me. In fact, people were being polite and courteous for the most part. When I went for lunch people were offering chairs to others looking for a seat and wiping their tables with napkins when they were finished so someone else could sit down. Amazing! I'd always heard such horror stories of the awful people who shop on Black Friday and I was so happy to see that, at least this year, it wasn't nearly that bad.

The hardest part of working today was the fact that I got terribly sick on Wednesday night. I went to B&BW at 3:00 for a very quick 4-hour shift. After only about an hour I was insanely hot, to the point I had to sit down for fear of passing out. When I sat down I got really cold... Oh no, I thought, it's a fever. I bet I have the flu. I got some water and got a fruit smoothie from the food court hoping the liquids and vitamins would help me power-through the rest of my shift, but after about half-a-smoothie I started to feel nauseous. So, contrary to how I usually am, I asked to go home early. My ASM told me that I "looked like death," told me not to drive home, and to get some rest. When I got home at about 6:45 I immediately got into a scalding hot bath (in an attempt to break my fever), then curled up on the couch in my PJ's and a blanket and slept for about 3 hours (through an Avalanche game, boo!) before crawling to bed. Then I slept wrapped up in blankets with my heat pad on level 8 all night until I finally woke up around 8:30 Thursday morning. I'd successfully broke my fever but was then dealing with the stuffy nose/sore throat/headache junk. Ugh.

Our Thanksgiving was really nice, low-key, and I know that the relaxing day helped me mend from being ill. We went to Angela's around noon and munched on goodies and watched the end of season 6 of Lost. I slept off and on all day long, probably sleeping an hour for every hour I was awake (including through another Avs game, ugh!). But I ate a little, being careful not to overdo it, and just tried to rest as much as possible in preparation of Black Friday and an even longer work shift on Saturday (essentially from 5:00 am till 4:00 pm). Angela's dinner was fantastic, and she made enough to feed about 10 people! Everything was great and I can't wait to join her for leftovers.

I'm feeling a lot better today. I'm still trying to load up on cold/flu medicine but I'm not nearly as tired today and I don't feel as awful. I'm still sniffly but no more headache and no fever, hooray! Hopefully all will be 100% by next week, in time to go to PT for my back pain on Thursday.

So other than feeling a bit under the weather things are going well. There's finally a tiny, dim, itty bitty light at the end of a very long tunnel... so I'm just hoping we can make it till then.