Parallax

Tum-te-tum. I've got myself the flu and I expect it's going to turn into bronchitis, because some kind of Big Nasty Illness happens to me every other year and I'm due for it. I'd be more irate about this if I had the energy for it, but as it is all I can manage is a resigned sort of disappointment and a scratchy-voiced beg for crackers.

I'm sure there's some reasoning behind body temperatures and circadian rhythms that'd explain why I'm perkiest early in the morning. The rest of the time all I can do is perform my impression of left-over scrambled eggs: limp and rubbery, a tick above room temperature, wholly unappetizing. Whiny eggs. Whining is an important part of the recuperative process, you know. Especially when the standard flu muscle aches decide for some ungodly reason to all focus on my butt. That's beyond unfair.

It's all led to very strange dreams: time capsules wrapped with paper and hastily-spackled concrete; enormous hypodermic needles to be used as offensive weapons; claw-foot bathtubs full of delicious-smelling tea-like soaks; cellphones that receive messages from twenty years ago; lockpick sets given as gifts (and that's the biggest waking disappointment, it was a NICE set); compendiums of poetry being frighteningly altered by time travel; physically impossible fish in giant tanks; old friends that I've still never met; tower-block apartments with windows built like loading docks; a problem with spies when making italian food for guests; questions of architecture in alternate realities. At least I've kept myself entertained.

The saddest thing in the world, when you have the flu, is to haul your aching carcass into the kitchen, accompanied by a fretful and bored dog, only to learn that there is NO MORE BREAD FOR TOAST. Woe & alas.

Please send Mary Russell books, potato bread, and for god's sake something to keep the dog entertained, she's bored stiff with me being in bed and is not handling it well at all.