What’s it called when each day is worse than the one before? Hell? Life? High school?

Today I hit a new kind of low, physically anyway. I think it’s allergies, what with the wind whipping and all sorts of things growing madly, as if spring were already here. If it’s this bad now, how much worse will it get once the real spring arrives? I woke up with a headache that was both dull and sharp at the same time, as if someone had stuffed my head with cheese and was rooting around in there with a fondue fork.

And my stomach felt queasy. If I were a drinker, the word “hangover” might come to mind, but I lean toward the theory that it was the organic frozen pizza I had last night, instead of real food. I thought if it was organic, maybe it would be better, but I guess they have to put something in it to make it taste like pizza. And organic or not, I was still tasting it hours later, only it wasn’t nearly as pizza-like by then.

But that’s only the physical part, and I mostly blame the time change. It’s kind of too bad the time only changes twice a year, because I could use more excuses to feel lousy, but what are you going to do? It’s the law.

And anyway, mentally and emotionally I’m doing better today than I was earlier in the week, and better tonight than I was all day. Maybe it’s the hour nap I took at noon, or the hearty meal of leftover soup I had tonight. (I’m telling you, that stuff gets better every day. Maybe I should save the rest of it for another week or so. It ought to taste like heavenly ambrosia by then.)

So here’s what I think. I think that even though it seems, as I work my way through the day, that each today is worse than every yesterday, I’m counting on that not being true, because we’re getting further and further from the source of all this melancholy and malaise. Sooner or later it won’t seem as if the time had changed at all. That might be just about the time we’re ready to set the clocks back in November, but I’m hopeful it won’t take that long. In spite of my moodiness, I’m always kind of hopeful, hard as it is to show it.