Cold Snap

My week from hell began last Friday with a few phone calls from an unknown (866) number. "I'm not answering this shit," I thought to myself and rolled myself tighter into the blanket, crawling my way out of a whiskey hangover in the dark. It was an unfortunate hangover in that it was coupled with insomnia, so I was aware of every gradient of suffering along the way into the pit of despair that I had dropped into by noon New Years day.

By Saturday evening I was in better spirits as I went through paperwork, getting ready for the year. I navigated through my student account online for a moment before a red alarm flashed in the center of the screen. "HOLD" it said.

WTF?

I clicked in the hold and in short order I discovered that this account was suspended, and the reason for this is that I needed to update my immunization records in order to proceed any further.

I scanned through and realized that while I had a mostly current record of shots, I was sort of due for the tetanus one as it had been over 10 years. #Areyouserious?

So then I was gathering information on health clinics to call first thing on Monday to get these shots, and on the phone with Walgreens, when I found out about the false charges on my bank card. My stomach tightened. My wallet was missing. I mentally indexed the things I'd need to replace. I called the bank and they said they'd just freeze my whole checking account until things got sorted.

Another sleepless night followed, this time with a menacing tickle in the back of my throat that coughed me awake after I would doze off for a short minute.

On Monday I waited for 3 hours in the health clinic. It was a day that registered 7 degrees Fahrenheit. a -20 degree windchill. The weather reports screamed of warnings and severe weather, and warned of an extended 14 day period of Arctic conditions. "No End In Sight!" read the headlines in articles about the weather. Meteorologists across the board were unanimous in their forecast of sub-zero weather for at least the next couple of weeks, during which it would snow during a few sever weather storms.

One good break was that being a filipino in a hospital or a health care center works in your favor when a lot of the staff is filipino or asian too. A very nice nurse who was acting like an auntie to me helped me as much as she could. She didn't ask me for an id, which had worried me since I realized that I didn't even have a wallet!

I raced over to school with two very sore arms - I need to mention how much I loathe shots from the deepest core of my being - and presented my doctor's note to the office. I was just finished telling the girl at the desk about how I couldn't feel anything below my elbows. "Yikes," she said, "well, unfortunately I am actually going to need one more record before I can take off this hold."

"But you already have that record!!!" I protested, holding down the volume of my voice as much as I could muster, sweating underneath my winter coat and scarf.

"Yeah, no, I am sorry, we just need to update all of the records especially after our offices moved, Ill. state law requires us to have this..."

I raced to my parent's house and dug through their filing cabinet while filing a police report and getting into an argument with a police woman about whether I was giving her attitude, or telling her how to do her job. I typed up a letter disputing the false charges on my bank card to fax to the bank.

The next morning I raced to school, got the hold lifted and straightened things out at the bank. I was looking over my schedule of classes to find that during the academic hold, while I had been running around town taking care of paperwork, one of my classes had been filled. I fired off an email to the professor, who is also my academic advisor asking about a waitlist. She got got back to me fast to tell me, nope, this class is full. At least it is going to be offered next quarter. At this point every other word out of my mouth is a new and creative cuss word.

I shuffled my schedule around again and worked everything out. I went to class, and then I went in the id office to get my cta pass. "Since you didn't finish registering until this week, you can't pick it up until next week." Ok, onto the library.

"To give you your library card back, I'm going to need to see at least one more piece of identification and a letter with your current address," said the librarian.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me." I didn't hold back that time.

I was walking the half mile home in the snowstorm, feet freezing in the drifts on the sidewalk with tears welling in my eyes beneath my black fur lined hood feeling sorry for myself, when I reached to adjust my hat. As my thumb brushed up my hair, I noticed that the diamond stud on my right ear was missing, although my other earring was still in my left ear. #FML

The story goes on. Things get resolved with the library, and I found my earring underneath my pillowcase. But not until after venting my despair at my brother, who quickly gathered his things and skedaddled when I told him I was about to kill someone and I liked him too much for it to be him. I went over to Kelly Hyatt's house, and over coffee we talked shit until we could laugh about what a shitty week I'd been having.

Later on she took me to her friend's house in Pilsen. He had flown back from NYC that morning after having an equally shitty time driving there. I realized that this mayhem and craziness is happening to everyone and am finally starting to chill the eff out. Things can only get better!