I lost a month of my life.

I mean, I knew exactly where it got to, but still, it's lost. Gone.

On October 30, after a long night of some pretty hard partying, I woke up tired and achey with a sore throat. Thus began the WORST headcold of my life--which lingered throughout all of November and into December, and in fact turned into a sinus infection and bronchitis, and possibly walking pneumonia. (I'm waiting to see on that last one.) This wretched epizoodie from hell was still going strong on November 8, when my friends and I gathered together and threw back drinks called "Nasty Woman" and "Putin's Puppet" and "The Bad Hombre" and prepared for the election results. We were trying not to jinx anything, but I would be lying if I said we weren't looking at each other with hope, and excitement, and glee. 

As the night went on, the mood went downhill. A lot of our friends are LGBTQA+, and they started making weak, grim jokes about the internment camps. Anna sat on Michael's lap and began to cry. My friend John saw the expression on my face and silently switched over to making me gin and tonics. 

I cried myself to sleep that night. 

The next morning, I woke up with a crying hangover, probably an actual hangover, and my sickness still wreaking havoc on my body. Like so many of the folks in my country, I was decimated, devastated, disgusted, and frightened. I still was, 10 days later, when I flew down to Florida for an extended Thanksgiving holiday. 

And so, I lost a month. An autumn month, at that. And then when I emerged (still coughing) into the cold, grey morning of December 1, I noticed three things: 

1. It got cold, at some point. Goodbye, fall, I barely knew ye.

2. I somehow managed to inexplicably sprain my toe.

3. The upstairs toilet flooded. 

The following days haven't been nearly as bad, but I am still kind of bewildered about how I lost a whole month. Only in the last ten days have I really felt like I've opened my eyes again to my surroundings and hopes and plans. The days are long, but the years are short, and when you've lost a month of your year, it gets even shorter.