Not Better Yet

They might as well bring around the dead cart: I'm apparently not going to get better. I've tried everything - emergen-C, homeopathic ColdCalm, Zicam, echinacea tea, gypsy cold care tea, lots of water, lots of juice, sudafed, ibuprofen, tussin cough syrup, robitussin night time cough and cold, nyquil, breathing in boiling steam laced with Vicks, squirting saline through my sinuses - and nothing works. I can't sleep and I can't breathe and this is completely horrible and, what's worse, I might run out of kleenex soon, which would be completely disastrous. That's four boxes gone through since Friday. Four. I have watched Jurassic Park 2 and the first four episodes of Day of the Triffids and I have finished a really terribly hideous hat and I have reread the first two volumes of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books (which reminded me that I was then, am now and ever shall be in love with Stephen Maturin) and I have watched the clock slowly, slowly tick over from 3 am to 4 to 5 and then do it again 12 hours later. And I still feel like death on a stick. I would like to lodge a protest with whoever invented colds, the flu or whatever fucking terrible germ thing I have right now: this is too much and unfair.

N.B. In keeping with my my naval reading habits (I'm onto the third book now) and general early 19th century malaise - I believe I feel a touch of pleurisy coming on, galloping, galloping, oh my word - I'm treating myself with rum, since I'm unclear on what, exactly, grog is. The rum is helping. The kleenex situation may be becoming dire. And I gave the dogs each a bone and the cat some plastic balls with bells in them to reward them for being good while I've been on my deathbed - or, which is more to the point, bribe them to please, for the love of god, stay good while I'm on the deathbed. They haven't been entirely good, because the cat is often bored and when she is bored she likes to stand on my stomach and wail and when I throw her off the bed she simply takes up position on the dresser (tactically situated out of range of flying wadded kleenex and bad unfinished fantasy novels) and wails some more. She doesn't much like the plastic balls with bells in, either. She wants a bone, because the dogs have one, even though it wouldn't keep her interest long. The dogs are opposed to her having a bone and actually, they'd like to have those balls, just on the off chance that the cat was getting something worthwhile. Poor dogs. I am a bad dog mom. If they were kids I could just let them explode their brains with bad TV, but it's harder with dogs. Django watched me squirt salt water into my nose over the sink with fascination and barked at me for doing it, which was interesting. Maybe someday I'll walk them again.