My quarantine is over and I have been back at work. It's always fun to sit around at home and have me time, but it's horribly boring when you can't leave the house. During my stint as a couch resident I found I was often cold in the morning, so I took up drinking a lot of tea (also because I some how had it in my head that I would expel the virus from my system faster if I kept trying to fill myself with liquids). I went through most of our supply in a matter of a week and went to restock today while we went grocery shopping. I came across one called "Misto" that has apple, caju, something or another of rose and a few other things. It's quite good, slightly sweet, and strong. Sweet is important because I discovered somewhere in the last 4 years of living here, I have stopped liking my tea with sugar (except when it's Earl Grey with milk), lest I put a tad too much in and kill the flavor of the tea.

The DI season is about to start - will I handle it better than last year? I sure hope so - if the first week of school / traveling back from the states with 300 lbs of luggage hadn't given me a shingles attack, DI certainly would have.

Yes, indeed, I have shingles. Now I am stuck at home for 7 days taking antivirals, B vitamins, putting compresses on my back.... I hate not working. On the upside, I'll now have lots of time to do all that reading for my MA, which thank goodness I am not even behind in yet! However it remains to be seen if all the adults in my class have had chicken pox yet, and if they have not, then I will probably not be able to complete the course. Being out the money for the course, plus for medicine, plus not knowing what is going on in my classroom for a whole week - ug I hate this!

I started itching last Wednesday. Just a typical itchy spot. Then it got redder. Then it got bigger. Then it got little blisters. Then it spread to other points on my back. Then some of the blisters turn red and scabby and really gross looking. It started to burn and pulse painfully. I spent most of Sunday trying to dry out the blisters with a salt paste and got salt all over the house as a consequence. Now tomorrow morning I am going to try to emergency squeeze myself in between some patients at the dermatologist to see if what ever this is is 1) contagious and 2) something that can be treated. I'm a little more concerned about #1 right now, since it looks distinctly like Chicken Pox. But I had chicken pox when I was like... 5 or something. I still have the scars. I remember it, sort of. I was already at work for 2 weeks, 3 days worth of it itching - I hope none of my kids get it.

In other news, I have just returned from my first MA course, to be completed in the next two weeks. I have to type discussion notes for two chapters and read an additional article by tomorrow. I'm glad I at least already read the chapters - that helps.

I'm alive, back in Brasil. School has begun again and next week I start my MA in Education. I promise someday I'll actually write a post about life, just not today.