I’d really begun to doubt myself. Surely I’d just forgotten other times when I was tired. Surely I’d just imagined that I used to have more energy. Surely I was getting myself all worked up over nothing at all.

Then this morning, I woke up. Really. What a difference! I went to work, walked across campus with a spring in my step, sat at my desk without slumping, and even ended up smiling for most of the day. My brain turned on and actually started functioning. And when I got home from work, I called home, made and ate dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and made a batch of iced tea. Notice the distinct lack of “took a 2 hour nap” in that line-up of activities.

I have no idea what caused today’s change, but now that I’ve felt it, I know that I’ve only had a few such days in the last few months. So not only was this a heavenly day just because of the joy of having energy and a brain, but it was also a huge relief to be reminded that a “normal” day can, in fact, include a springy step, good mood, and functional mind. Finally, I have proof that the other state of being is not the way it’s always been. Finally, I have the confidence to ask more questions and figure out what’s happening when I’m not feeling good.

My brother’s school is no longer offering phone service in the dorms, so he needs a cell phone. My parents have a pay-as-you-go phone that they share amongst themselves or which ever of the still-living-at-home family happens to be traveling. And I have a regular old, run of the mill cell phone. My sister would like a cell phone, but she’s been too polite and practical to say so. And others in my family have their own plans, too. Put this all together and that equals a whole lot of cell phones. Why not all get onto one plan and split the cost?

And so that’s what we’re doing. Today, I ordered a bunch of additional lines on my account. Later this week, once those phones arrive and get activated, we’ll bundle all the phones onto a family plan. And then we’ll have to figure out who pays and how much.

But you know what? I’m almost as excited about this as I was when I bought my own phone way back when. My siblings will be easily reachable! My parents will have a phone no matter how many people are traveling to different places. We’ll all be able to talk to each other for “free.” And I be shelling out less per month than I do on my current run-o-the-mill minimalist plan.

For anyone else thinking of doing this, though, it took a lot of phone calls to AT&T to figure out exacty what to do, so here are the steps.

1. Order additional lines on your current account (select the family plan as the one that will govern these new lines).
2. Receive and activate the phones.
3. Call AT&T to have your current phone added to the familiy plan. At this point I’ll also check to make sure we’re all on the same area code and have them put us all together if we’re not. They’ve assured me this is no problem.

There should be no termination fees or anything, and I get to keep my old phone number and some of my accumulated roll-over minutes (equal to the number of monthly minutes in the new family plan). All in all the only things that would make this process nicer is if there weren’t those pesky activation fees on each phone, and if it didn’t freak out their computers that I asked for the phones to be sent to an address other than my own. At least the second one got cleared up with a minimum of fuss and only a slight delay in processing time. Now, if we could just work on the first… But I suppose that’s wishful thinking.

I’ve been going back and forth with myself. One minute I think that yeah, all the symptoms seem to fit, I must be hypothyroid. Why else would I always feel like I pulled an all-nighter, even when I got 10 hours of sleep? Why else would I have unexplained aches, or lose a small handful of hair every morning, or never really shed that pesky 10 pounds, or wake up with a body temperature that’s a full degree lower than I would have expected, or generally feel run down and icky all the time? Maybe this even explains my oddly rhythmed heart.

Then I remember that so far, the actual scientific proof isn’t very clear. Nobody, least of all me, is sure that the shift in my TSH level is far enough off from normal to mean anything at all.

Maybe the last five or six months have just been a little more draining than I thought. Maybe this is what it feels like to be leaving my 20s. Maybe I’m a little hypochondriacal and am just imagining it all. I’d hate to start giving myself permission to whine only to find that nothing’s wrong with me and I’m just a whiner looking for excuses to hone my craft. That would really stink.

So, since I can’t do anything about it at least until the next blood draw in six weeks, I guess I’ll try not to think about it too much and just get on with the business of living like normal. After all, there’s a good chance that everything is normal.

I’ve been trying to get even more sleep than normal lately. I’ve always needed a lot of sleep, but recently I’ve thought that another hour to hour and a half each night would probably make me (and everyone around me) happier.

Of course, I made this resolution just days before the Olympics started. Not smart. First there were the stunningly spectacular Opening Ceremonies, better than any I have ever seen. There was no going to bed before I found out how that torch got lighted. No way. And now I’ve seen the coverage schedule that runs until 11pm every night, and realized that I’ll probably be running on a massive sleep deficit for the next two weeks.

I’m not even a very sport-loving person. I’m pretty terrible at all sports (especially those having to do with running or with balls… which is most of them), and I normally don’t see the point in watching people go around and around anything (like a track), or try to get a ball to do, well, anything. And yet, the Olympics hold a special fascination for me.

For one thing, everyone there is really, really good at what they do. But that’s a given. No, for me, much of the fascination has to do with memories of childhood. Back then, a TV would magically appear in our normally TV-less house and we kids would be given free reign to stay up as late as we wanted to watch the games. We’d make little nests on the floor with our blankets and pillow and get absolutely caught up in the competitions, even when we didn’t fully understand the point of the games, or the rules. Even if we fell asleep early in the evening (and I have it on good authority that this was the common outcome every night), we were still thrilled by the lack of a bed time. And this excitement got bundled in with the excitement of the games themselves, and with my parents’ cheering and gasping and talking excitedly about the events we watched.

Even now, the theme song that plays before and after each commercial break or news cast triggers a smile and the distinct sense that tonight, no matter what I have to do tomorrow, there will be no bed time. Even now, I cheer on the swimmers and the runners with more than characteristic enthusiasm just as we did all those years ago with my parents.

I’ve been sick this week. Not horribly sick, just sick enough to put me into Accomplish The Bare Minimum mode… and keep me from eating for two days… and make me sleep for 14 hours night day and 10 hours the next. I’d class it is Moderately Miserable on a scale of “It’s Just a Cold” to “I Want My Mommy.” So, while it wasn’t so bad, it’s contributed to my sense that summer is passing me by. I was gone for two weeks that were so pleasant they felt like just a couple of days, then the day after I got back from that our family dog died and I lost a week to the haze of shock and pain that comes from losing a close furry friend, then I popped over to Iowa for my cousin’s wedding, and then I got sick (which only served to remind me that when the dog was alive, he’d come keep watch over me when I was sick). That’s a month, folks. A month of my precious, short summer is already gone. For all intents and purposes, I only have one more month of it left.

I want to dig my heals in and slow time down. I want to accomplish all those big summer projects I had lined up ready to fill the ever-fictional vast stretches of unscheduled time. I want to accomplish nothing at all and spend my time reading, or dangling tantalizing strings in front of the cat, or sitting on the porch watching the trees grow, or taking long walks to nowhere in particular. Uncharacteristically, I also want to meet new people. I’ve been living on my own deserted island for long enough, but haven’t had the time or energy or know-how to change that.

If that looks like about 4 summers’ worth of things to do to you, too, then I guess I’m not crazy.

Meanwhile, all the extra sleeping I did this week, combined with dream-induced anxiety about an upcoming speaking gig, had me up and about by 5 o’clock this morning. I lay in bed composing draft upon draft of an email in my head, complete with emphases and bold assertions. Then I cleaned my kitchen while I decided whether or not to actually write and send that email. And finally I made tea and took it and my laptop to the porch to buckle down to the actual task itself.

And you know what? I think that salvaged my day, because now I’ve been sitting here for 2 hours on the porch, sipping tea, listening to the birds, idly paging through the internet, and marveling at the lazy softness of a foggy morning. This, here right now, is what I want to do for the rest of my summer.

But instead I’ll get up, eat breakfast, take a shower, and get ready for a day at work full of half-finished projects, half-begun plans, and a distinct lack of string toys or cats.