The Great Escape

Time flies when you're having fun.
             --Public Domain

     This is a well-known truth, but there is also an odd sense in which the opposite is true. It is a week to date since my last entry, and although it hasn't been a joyride the whole way, I can scarcely remember the time passing. Days speed by when you're in a routine, sometimes so fast that you scarcely saw them. Like that disturbing moment when you pull into the parking lot at work one morning and while you recall leaving your driveway, you don't recall any of the driving between points A and B because it was so routine, so automatic, that it didn't even register to the brain. It is the unusual moments, the interesting, the variety of life, that fill the days and weeks with a substance of meaning and make them seem longer. Time slows down for fun-- it gives it leeway to make a memory that will last.
      Yes, I believe that having fun ought to be high on everyone's priority list. Way up there, next to proper eating and sleeping habits.
     Anyway. In the past week some notable changes have taken place. Most notably, Cough the Terrible has transformed itself into Cough the Timid too tentative to make itself known more than once or twice a day. This is most wonderful.     
      I have managed thus far to escape mono. But alas, my poor roommates suffer, mostly in silence, except in response to my inquiries after their health. I fix them dinner from time to time, and hot tea, and wash their dishes for them sometimes. But there is little else I can do to ease my conscience. Ease my conscience? Yes. You have heard of 'survivor's guilt'? that unfounded guilt experienced by the survivors of an event that was fatal to others? Well, there is also such a thing as 'healthy person's guilt' which is of course not nearly as deep and painful, but is still comparable in other ways. My roommates are ill and will be so for several months, but I somehow am not afflicted, and have recovered speedily from my cold. What makes me so special? What good is my great escape, if I can't share it? Ugh.
     Finding something amusing helps a great deal with keeping the distress manageable. This made me laugh.

I have two papers due this week. Don't tempt me to find the loopholes, Calvin.