Hello, I'm sick. I think. Maybe not.

In which I spend two days rotting on my couch and wondering if I'm imagining the whole thing. PLUS: what I watched and how to get your 50+ digestive system "moving."

According to TikTok, I have spent the last two days “rotting.”

Let me set the scene: me, wearing the same sweats for two days straight, lying on my IKEA couch, and alternating between reading my latest romantasy on my Kindle and watching anything the Netflix algorithm thinks I’ll like on TV. All the while, sinking into how lousy I feel.

I tried to ignore how yucky I was feeling for a couple of days. Exhausted. Headachy. Super nauseous. Sometimes stuffy. The weird potpourri of symptoms didn’t really make much sense.

And I am the kind of person who needs things to make sense. I need clear evidence to be able to identify and diagnose problems. It’s why it took me so long to stop drinking. I must not have a problem if I’ve never gotten a DUI or been sent to rehab.

Similarly, if there’s no vomiting, fever or blood, then I must be fine. No?

Well, no.

I thought about this while scrolling through Instagram, something I did a lot of this week during my rotting. I saw a quote from the writer Cheryl Strayed about her own path to being sober-ish and how she realized that she’d been drinking way too much. For Strayed, like many of us, it was not like she’d started drinking around the clock and had become physically addicted to booze. She had just come to know in her heart that she needed to stop.

“I was afraid to know it,” she says on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. “Because guess what happens when you know something? You have to act on it.”

It’s why we do the things that help us take the edge off, says the podcast host, Glennon Doyle. “So we can stop knowing.”

Also a side note: all the commenters on Instagram who need drinking to be a binary thing. Like you’re either an alcoholic or a normal person and nothing in between and that it all needs a label instead of finding what works for you. For me, that means not drinking and working on uncovering all the things I knew but didn’t want to feel when I was drinking.

As Strayed says, “If you don’t act on that knowing, it’s a mighty burden to bear.”

Back to the rotting.

@macysnookrotting days >> ☁️🙌🏼🔋 #lifestyle #relatable #relatablecontent #rotting #weekendmood #weekendvibes #cozyathome #rottinginbed #naps #recharge #fyp #selfcare #cozyvibes

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If you’re actually being fed “rotting” content on TikTok, then you know that I have not been using the term correctly. It’s actually a phenomenon when the girlies need to spend time decompressing on their couches (usually a Cloud dupe) when they need to recharge. Not when they feel like they’re two months pregnant, exhausted with constant barfy morning sickness, at 57.5 years old.

But just like my inaccurate — and constant — use of the term “catfishing,” I persist.

I spent Day 1 of my rotting feeling really annoyed with myself for giving into the weird symptoms. Convinced I was imagining things. Then I texted with a friend early on Day 2 and told her I hadn’t been feeling 100 percent and she texted back she’d been sick with a headache and upset stomach.

“Apparently a bug is going around,” she wrote, and that’s when I gave into whatever it is I had been struggling with. I pushed my dog off the couch, pulled a Target blanket over my body and binged an eight-hour series on Netflix about a pending alien invasion.

But today, I have a lot to do, so I’m going to go back to ignoring the barfiness. I’ll share this stunning piece of writing with all of you and then meet up with my sister to take our dogs for a walk before doing some writing for work.

And most importantly, I will take a shower. Because there is clear evidence that it’s time to wash my hair or I will be arrested.

Guys, look how happy my plants are. And that new monsterra leaf. Gah.

sunday shares: read + watch + cook + buy

What makes for a proper rot? Aside from looking at my phone (a lot), here is what I kept busy doing during my rotting era.

Wast Netflix’s new 3 Body Problem the best thing I’ve seen on TV lately? No. But it was fun enough that it kept me glued to the IKEA Ektorp all day on Friday.

I usually don’t let Netflix (or any of the TV apps) tell me what to do, but the movie You’ve Got Mail came up in my “For you” choices yesterday and I immediately clicked “Play.” If you feel like a good cry, you should watch it, too. Also, good for 1998 America that accepted Tom Hanks as the romantic lead of a major motion picture. Who is the female equivalent of Hanks? And can she carry a movie in 2024?

Ugh. I got roped back into Book 3.

Well, I was going to take a break from all the Sarah J. Maas romantasy books until the end of Book 2 in the Crescent City series, which roped me back in. I think Book 3 is about 900+ pages and yesterday during my rot I powered through about 40 percent of it on my Kindle. I do not love the main romantic characters in this series and frankly, Bryce is an absolute pain in the ass. But I like how it’s giving so much backstory to the ACOTAR folks that I am here for it all.

A PSA for women of a certain age with sluggish digestive systems. Gals, when I am not rotting on the couch and feeling fine, I have been feeling full. For the last few years, my digestive system has slowed and I just never feel empty. Enter these pills, which are the equivalent of magnesium dynamite that detonate in your small intestine. Let’s just say, they do the job.

Thanks for playing and see you next Sunday! xoAmy