All shook up

I dropped off the map for longer than expected this week due to catching a lurgy.

I have been very, very not well.

I felt it coming on after I left my Vivid Sydney shift at 11.30pm on Monday night.

I have done five RAT tests, all negative. I thought it was the flu and was kicking myself for not getting a jab, but DD reckons my symptoms don’t match the flu, so it must be a virus of some sort.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights were spent coughing up a lung for an hour, sleeping for an hour, coughing up a lung for an hour et al.

Last night I couldn’t sleep due to the severity of the coughing and had a pain in my chest. I was Googling pneumonia symptoms at 2am. I finally stopped the coughing and managed a few hours sleep by propping myself up on pillows.

I have soldiered on with work despite feeling like death warmed over because contractors don’t get paid for sick days and it has also been so busy that there hasn’t been time for bed rest.

The realisation that I was very crook finally hit when I concluded my work and parenting duties about 8.30pm on Wednesday night, collapsed in bed and realised how bad I felt. I had been planning to put the dogs to bed after a little rest, but I texted the youngest and said I was too sick to get out of bed.

Circling back to me working until 11.30pm at Vivid, I was talking to a lovely social media lass about Elvis Presley that night. We were sitting together at the Vivid Sydney HQ waiting for the clock to tick over to 11.30pm so we could slip off into the night.

She went to the premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS to get a few backstage reels or stories or whatever it is young people do on Instagram these days.

She told me the Elvis movie is better than the Elton movie but not as good as the Queen movie.

She said it’s a bit of a white wash because Priscilla Presley was involved, which is also probably why the Elton movie was meh.

But she admitted she wasn’t really across who Elvis was, the only thing she knew was that her dad said he died on the toilet while eating KFC.

I said that while Elvis was a big fan of bacon and peanut butter sandwiches, I didn’t think he had any fried chicken in the loo with him that night.

I told her I cried when he died in 1977. He was only 42. My mum was an Elvis fan and his songs and movies were on high rotation at our house. We went to see the Elvis That’s The Way It Is documentary together after his death at the Lyric Theatre and wailed.

My confessions to the young social media lass must have made me sound ANCIENT.

As I was driving the young skipping lass to practice on Tuesday, Elvis’s “A little less conversation” came on the radio.

It is one of my all-time favourite songs and I will never forget dancing to it with my enormous belly when I was pregnant with the eldest. The funky Junkie XL mix of the song had just been released and I was OBSESSED.

I am looking forward to dancing to the song again once my cough abates, this time with a spare tyre belly.

Have a good weekend. I’m supposed to be in the Vivid HQ again on Sunday night, keep your fingers crossed I’m better by then.

Song of the day: Elvis Presley: “A little less conversation”