So Darling Ones,

Before I get into the valuable life lessons I learned last week, I would just like to thank “Valentine” by The Replacements and my urinary tract for finally shaking “The Freshmen” out of my skull.

“Valentine” is stuck in my head because of the upcoming holiday, but also because I’ve been really sick. And the way I sing the song the line is: Hey, you pop up in some place, so sick & so divine.

So here’s the valuable life lesson I learned: if you are a 50-year-old vaginaed person who never experienced a UTI in their entire fifty years of having a vagina, a UTI can present much like a wayward period. I also learned that having a UTI running rampant throughout my urinary system sucks much harder than any period I ever remember having.

Darling Ones, I’ve been so sick the last three or four days I didn’t even tell anyone about it. I didn’t have the energy to reassure people I wasn’t on my deathbed. And I couldn’t figure out what to say to anyone or even if I should.

This is a conundrum of living alone that I have never figured out.

When I got The COVID, I told everybody. Mostly because I had been with a lot of people the week before and also there was a small chance it might kill me.

But, do my friends and family need to know that I have a UTI? Do they even care? I didn’t think so. There’s not really anything anyone could do about it, and now that the antibiotics are kicking in I feel less like wanting to perish from this earth.

This weekend in between naps and occasionally weeping about how shitty I felt, I pondered what kind of minor illnesses I should tell people about. I couldn’t really think of any. Or what the point of telling people would be.

I’m a “let me die in peace” person and not a “please, nurse me back to health” person. So being all, “FYI I gotta UTI” seemed utterly pointless. Yet, I feel a little shady as though I’m hiding something. I have no idea why I think this is information anyone needs to know, even you, Darling Ones.

Let’s blame all this on the brain weasels and the fact that I’m only at about 65% right now. Sound good?

Sick and not at all divine,
Jodi