Too Tired Not To Waste

I'm home sick today. Some sort of stomach bug jumped up and bit me this weekend, and I'm feeling not so great. I've been sleeping most of the day, in between answering emails from work and flipping channels and eating canned meals.

I find that funny, really. Maybe not funny ha-ha, but at least funny strange. See, back in The Day (you remember The Day, don't you? That'd be that time before my grandparents, when people had no running water and walked to school in three feet of snow, uphill both ways, with boxes on their feet so they wouldn't ruin their only shoes?) people had family or neighbors to take care of them when they were sick. Or they didn't, and they had to take care of themselves or just hope they made it through to the better side of whatever virus they had.

I do have family living right here in my own house, but said family has to work, because there are bills to pay. Back in The Day, there were bills to pay, too--or rather, work that needed to be done if the family could ever hope to eat that day. So probably, I'm no better or worse off for having to be alone in the house by myself today.

I am, however, a heck of a lot more wasteful than they probably were. I laid down on the couch, turned on the TV, took a couple of Tylenol and a Benedryl and promptly fell asleep, meaning that the electricity being used by the TV was just being wasted on my cat, who doesn't like cooking shows anyway.

And of course, now I am awake, I've eaten leftover pizza (commercial-bought) and a can of lemonade ("lemon" ade), creating just a little more waste. Because, you see, I'm too tired not to waste resources.

But really, would I sleep less deeply if the TV were off? Would it have killed me to defrost one of the mini-shepherd's pies I have in ceramic dishes in the freezer? Couldn't I fall asleep reading a book and get the same restfullness that the Benedryl and Tylenol and Food Network got me?

I'm not advocating that we all lie about in agony when we're sick (I kind of hate agony, really), but it's times like this (and that may be the fever talking) when I wonder if maybe we should, as a world, be less apt to take the easy way out and say we're too tired to do something.

I think the whole problem is the word "convenience." I mean, how convenient is it really, if it just hastens the destruction of the current ecosystem? Makes that microwave dinner seem a whole lot more menacing, doesn't it?

Again, might be the fever--but I'm still going to think about it the next time I get sick. Right now, I'm going to turn off the TV and computer and read Slow Food until I fall asleep again.