My only dog friend in here. He was an extraordinary dog, much loved and missed.
It’s day six of the craziest Fever Week.
I got fever jinxed at work on Tuesday. Someone from the production side came in to my office and said “You we’re pretty sick weren’t you?” I said “No, I’m hardly ever sick. No time to get sick now, right.” Answered the phone, replied emails for a couple of hours before I got sick. Very, very sick.
I didn’t lie when I said I’m hardly ever sick. The last time I had fever (the last time I recall now, anyway) was a few years ago. My boyfriend had a fever too and we were measuring our temperatures every five minutes to see which one was sicker, the other one had to get food for us. Luckily, my boyfriend’s body temperature was a degree lower than mine normally, so I won almost every time.
This time, I didn’t have that privilege. I was in another country, alone and my heating hadn’t turned on yet. (My heating only goes on for a couple of hours in a morning and a couple of hours in the evening. In October, I had to request the heating to be turned on at all, since my landlord thought it was still too warm out to heat the houses.) On that evening I became very home sick which doesn’t happen too often either. I wished nothing more than to be home, that I had a time machine and everything was like it was three years ago. I was quite sure I had a good chance to fall unconscious so I informed a couple of friends here to tell them I was sick. Later, my sister called me, asking about my health insurance and credit cards. I am pretty sure I heard the word hospital and surgery at some point and then realized maybe it was a bit too much to make an announcement about myself being sick, so I didn’t call mum.
On a Fever-Wednesday I became delusional. I spent the day sleeping and had the craziest dreams. Each time I woke up I was not completely sure what was true and what was not. One time I woke up with a strong feeling that I wanted to have baby, that I wanted to be mum for this beautiful, curly-haired baby girl. I quickly came up with a bunch of names (which I am keeping though, good names they were) and worries about our living arrangement. This went on about an hour between 5 and 6 pm and then I fell asleep again. The next time I woke up and felt like I had a heavy ticket box on my throat and I couldn’t breath. This was a clear mirror of my work stress. I have worked in festival production for four months now and the festival kicks off next Tuesday. This is why, in my office on Tuesday, I said there’s no time to get sick now. I couldn’t help but think something was ought to go wrong, no matter how hard I worked and how well I prepared. It was the fever talking.
Friday night’s nightmare focused on the worries about my financial situation and the annoying little voice inside my head that often keeps nagging me about bank accounts, pay slips and electricity bills. Saturday morning was stressful and by the time I got to work, pass those 50-something year-old twins pushing pram full of plastic bags, I had no energy for any kind of social activity. Unfortunately, I happened to cover an afternoon shift in a busy, festival info office whose main customer that day seemed to be the mean Irish elderly. Halfway through my shift I was feeling incredibly week and then my phone rang. It was mum. The word behind the seas had spread and she was quite sure I was dying of a horrible island fever of some kind. My sister had been over for lunch. There I was, trying to convince my mum over the phone I was not dying, while coughing like I had a lung cancer. But after a while she said something that made everything good. Something that scared off some of the nightmares and made me think; I don’t need a baby, the festival will go fine and I don’t need to move houses (too bad I had already sent a panicking email to my landlord whom I’ve met once, asking about the policy in returning the safety deposit in case of ending the fixed term lease before it expires, on Saturday, at 6am).
Although Fever Week is still not over, it has taught me a thing or two already. When you have great friends who provide you with excellent entertainment (Garden State, Lars and the Real Girl, Tillsammans, Tootsie and Walk the Line) throughout the weekend and a family who’s always there for you, even if they’re 1258 miles away, no nightmare is big enough not to handle.
