Monday, July 25, 2005

Catch 22

When my buddies come into town to game, I usually have a balancing act to perform. If I spend too little time with them, they feel like I've dissed them, and it's less likely they'll go to the effort of coming into town next time. (With a baby, it's even more difficult than before for me to go to them, so it could mean the end of buddy gaming altogether.) On the other hand, the more time I spend with them, the more I risk my wife feeling like a gaming widow, which could damage marital harmony and preclude future gaming sessions as well.

Usually, I can manage the competing interests okay, but this past weekend, I had another party vying for my attention: myself. I didn't even really feel like gaming - all I really wanted to do was just lie down and do my corpse impression. Still reeling from the lingering sickness that's been coming and going for the past three weeks, I was being hit particularly hard those few days. Between the fever, chills, coughing, sore throat, sinus headache, and general malaise, I was pretty cranky and irritable. Because of all the drainage nausea, nothing ever sounded good to eat, so I ended up not eating a lot, which made me feel weak. All I could really stomach was Gatorade for some reason.

But the worst part was that I had a hard time sleeping more than a couple hours a night, which caused me to actually fall asleep gaming on my poor DM at one point because I was so exhausted I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I hope he didn't take it personally - I felt really bad about that. Sometimes, you just succumb to the relentless barrage of weariness when you're sick.

On the home front, I spent too much time in bed when I got home from gaming, exasperating my wife, who was beginning to feel like a single mother. And I pushed myself too hard and exhausted myself, trying to pretend that I was feeling better than I was. So, unfortunately, I don't think I did a good job balancing things this time. Everyone was annoyed at me at one point or another.

I did make one good call, though. I opted out of the movie that the guys wanted me to go see with them so I could stay home with the boy and let my wife go do some things she wanted to do. They went to see Fantastic Four, and apparently, it's a stinker - one of the guys "kinda" liked it, while the other two gave it a thumbs down. It would have been a bummer to burn good marriage capital on a bad movie.

It's going to happen again in a month or so. Maybe next time, I'll do a better job of it. It will help if I can not be sick this time.

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