Breakfast with Amber

December 2021: The Day I Didn't Write

I have gone into detail ad nauseam about how much I write. In fact, if I didn't write so much, I wouldn't be writing this book. However, as I was looking through my calendar for stuff to write about for December 2021, I noticed that there was absolutely nothing on December 21. That was strange. There was always something on my calendar for every day, even if it was just my writing assignment for the day. Then I looked back a day at December 20, saw "DJT COVID booster" scheduled for 1 pm, and thought, "That's the culprit."

COVID vaccines have never been a good time for me. I briefly described what I felt like after getting my second dose (in case you don't remember, I made a video where I said, "Well, guess what. This vaccine's making me feel like shit.") Every shot since then has also made me feel like shit. Just last week, I got another booster, and I spent the night lying awake in bed sweating and aching, and I didn't have it in me to do any writing that day, which is why you're getting shorter chapters for the next four months. Remember, if you have a bad reaction to the vaccine, that means your immune system is strong and healthy.

I must have scheduled the day after my vaccine as a free day in anticipation of the agony that was going to follow my booster shot. That or I woke up, realized I wasn't in any shape to do much of anything, and cancelled my writing for the day, and pushed back everything I had scheduled.

I have very few reasons to cancel my writing for a particular day. My parents visiting is one of them. So is being sick. In December 2020, I got an ear infection that hurt so badly that I couldn't focus on my writing as I was doing it, so I cleared out the next three days so I could recover. When I got food poisoning, I...actually I gave myself more writing since I took the day off. I threw up one time and suddenly felt better.

But back to December 2021. This particular booster is a bit of a blur because it's the least recent but maybe also because I spent the whole thing in a fever-fueled daze. When we drove up to the CVS, I must have already been dreading the day of aching and lethargy I knew was ahead of me. There are no surviving pictures of the outing except for one picture of Dad watching the needle being inserted into his arm. I know I could never do that. I just stare straight ahead, and when the needle goes in, I'll know it because I can feel it.

Actually, wait a minute. That picture was taken on December 11. There are no surviving pictures of that particular outing, and that's okay because I don't really want to look at pictures of needles being inserted into people's skin. However, there is a picture of me getting froyo at Orange Leaf immediately afterwards because nothing goes with drugs quite like froyo.

Then I spent the next day vegging out on the couch watching game shows, which, now that I think about it, was how I spent my last post-vaccination-feeling-bleh day up until my grandparents showed up.

But there was a lot of other stuff happening in December. For one thing, we had Tettmas, and Mom brought these tiny little pudding shots. There was one that was made with alcohol and one that wasn't, but I don't think I had either of them because the non-alcoholic one was hazelnut flavored, and while the other one looked delicious, I knew that I was going to be hit with the betrayal of alcohol, and since the picture is captioned, "Creamsicle pudding shots (orange emoji)," I would have also been hit with the double betrayal of citrus.

This was the night Alex gifted us all crafts from the artisans at the Walls Unit prison in Huntsville, Texas because, as I've failed to mention up until this point, Alex used to work as a prison guard, and lower-level offenders who work as craftsmen can still make stuff for commissions. Aunt Suzy got a wineglass with a purple swirl pattern, Grammy and Grampy got cornhole boards, and I got my beloved Pikachu cup. The lid might not fit on it properly, and Ash's hat might be the wrong color, but it's the cutest cup I've ever darn seen, and it has my name on it, something no gift shop souvenir will ever have. Besides, even if I can't drink from it, I can still use it as a phone stand when I make my videos.