Worst

I assume this is what your Christmas morning looks like by now.  I'm just having my first sip of hot coffee in a cold and empty house after a terrible night.  Covid got me again, this time in the form of the vaccine.  

By yesterday afternoon, I was feeling achey all over.  I had already done everything I needed to do--bought presents and groceries--by the time I headed over to my mother's house.  I was going to make a spaghetti carbonara.  I had champagne and chianti Classico and thought I could muscle through.  But when I got there, I just collapsed.  Maybe it was the sun going down.  You know, sundowner's syndrome.  I fell onto the couch and closed my eyes. . . and the room began to spin.  "My" vertigo came charging back full bore.  And nothing I did made it stop.  I was miserable.  I told my mother I couldn't make dinner.  We ate the arugula salad and turned on t.v.  I put on "The Ricardos" and tried to sit perfectly still in her recliner while I alternately sweat through my shirt and then got the chills.  She was not for me driving home at movie's end, but I had to go home for various reasons, one of which was that I could not find my phone.  

It was sitting on the kitchen counter when I returned.  

We did not open gifts last night, those gifts we said we would not exchange this year.  And I feel bad now, for the hour is late and I am still muddled from the double dose of Avid P.M. I took last night.  I am not sure how I feel yet this morning, but I know it is not good.  

For some reason, I thought of cartoon strips this morning.  I remembered that when I wrote about the cartoon strips in the Sunday paper, I had forgotten about this one.  "Blondie."  I guess watching "The Ricardos" last night must have reminded me of it.  It was always at the top of the cartoon page and always one of the largest.  

I have to try to get my shit together and get over to my mother's.  It is Christmas.  

The most miserable one I've ever spent.