You know how, when you’re healthy, you sometimes think, “Oh, if only I could stay home today and lie on the couch and watch TV ALL DAY. Or read ALL DAY. And eat whatever I want. And ignore the world?” And then, as soon as you’re sick and actually lying on the couch, watching TV and reading back issues of The New Yorker ALL DAY, you feel horrible, miserable and don’t enjoy it at all? Yeah, what’s that all about? I know life isn’t fair but, come on, throw me a wishbone here.
So, yeah, been sick. Whoopee!!
What it entailed was a lot of coughing, gasping for air, tension headaches, sleeplessness, eating chocolate chips from a bowl while watching TV and periods of restless “clean up” around the house. The cleaning up was me thinking, “Oh, what’s a little illness? I can still dust, vacuum and do laundry… Uh, I don’t feel so hot… all that dusting made me feel… faint…” So then I gave up on productive activities and decided to read books. Catch up on some reading, see? Keep the brain working. Learn stuff. But then that became too hard. “What did I just read? What… Eat cookie? What was that last sentence? What if I don’t really have a cold but instead I have cancer?”