I am miserably allergic. The combination of paint and dust and spring pollen and an extremely careless dairy intake* has knocked me flat. I want nothing more than to crawl under the sheets and go back to sleep. Well, apparently I want to whine to my blog more, because that’s what I’m choosing to do, but mostly I want to sleep.

But the blog inspiration was because I was realizing how lucky I am. My reaction to feeling so allergic was the automatic stress of a decade ago: I can’t be sick, I have too much to do! And it is true that my to-do list is about eighteen items long at the moment, ranging from the enormous — finish writing this damn book — to the marginally less enormous — clean the porch, touch up the trim paint, call a plumber about the dripping faucet — to the reasonably minor — install a bathroom light, spread some mulch around the plants out front.

And then I remembered that with the exception of the book, no one else on the planet cares when I do all the other stuff on my to-do list. I could crawl under my covers and have a completely unproductive day and it would not matter to anyone. When I put it that way, it sounds kind of bleak, but I didn’t feel bleak about it when it occurred to me. Instead, I just felt really fortunate. How lucky I am to be able to be sick with impunity. Sure, it sort of sucks to feel so lousy, but it’s so nice that I can be sick and decide to go back to bed and have that not be a disaster. It almost makes me not want to go back to bed, just so I can appreciate how fortunate I am.

I also woke up this morning to an incredibly painful jaw. I think I was grinding my teeth in my sleep. This is not fortunate, but I know exactly what it was from. I’ve been waiting for some of the houses in my neighborhood to sell and for the sales to close and have known, comfortably, that despite all my preparation, I wouldn’t be putting my house on the market until that happened. Well, it’s happening. Two houses sold this week and one closed. One of the houses that sold had only been on the market for about two weeks. That’s… well, exciting. Good news, right? Also terrifying in its own way. If I wanted, I could finish up the “must be done” items to put the house on the market this weekend. Well, not the book — but the house-related must-be-dones. I keep telling myself that there’s no rush, to take my time, to relax, but I think selling a house is just not ever going to be a relaxing sort of proposition.

Yesterday, I bought wood stain and black spray paint and touched up the cabinets in my bathroom and the solar lights that line my walkway (respectively). That’s the kind of job that normally I would think I should do but never get around to. Two hours of work, maximum, and both the cabinets and the walkway look so much better. It makes me wish I’d done the cabinets about five years ago. I could have been living with them looking nice all this time. Ah, well. Lesson learned, maybe.

Meanwhile, today I think I will be taking it easy. Some words on Grace, so I don’t break my current chain and maybe a couple of the phone calls I need to make, but otherwise, I think I’ll be wallowing in the freedom to be miserably allergic. Happily miserable allergic, if that’s not a total oxymoron!

*The dairy intake was both really stupid and sort of totally worth it. I was in my car, passing a Starbucks, thought how nice a coffee would be, and then got inspired in the drive-through lane to try their carmelized honey frappucino. It was perfect. Absolutely deliciously sweet and cold and everything I wanted. And I was probably a third of the way through when I thought, duh, the reason this tastes so good is because it’s real milk, you idiot! So yummy, though. If you handed me one right now, I would absolutely drink it even knowing the price.