snowy morning through the bathroom skylight

snowy morning through the bathroom skylight
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

It's A's birthday again and it would be a wonderful day except for the fact that she has a bad kidney infection and I have some kind of horrible cold virus type thing. So it's the infirmary around here and even the fact that it was a snow day didn't really lift our spirits. I managed to stagger as far as the bathroom skylight to take this groundbreaking photograph and I even took a couple out the living room window before I went back to bed. I've been fighting this cold for days and today I lost - it sucked, because before today I'd been naively thinking how great it would be to be sick and stay home without guilt. I forgot about how the being sick part is just not fun by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm better off than poor A, who spent half the night in the emergency room last night and is now on massive scary drugs which have us both all worried because we made the inevitable and tragic mistake of reading the side effects on the package from the drug store. The terrifying side effects - oh, excuse me a second -

"A!"
"Mom?"
"Are you having any suicidal thoughts yet?"
"Yeah, a few."

Good, she's normal. Everyone has suicidal thoughts on their birthday even if they aren't on suicidal thought inducing drugs like this one. Anyway, the terrifying side effects package also mentions that this is a good drug for anthrax, which is handy to know and, which is unsettling, that it shouldn't be taken by kidney patients. We are unsure then, if it should have been given to A who has, after all, a serious kidney infection. Naturally, by the time we figured this out - I had to get out of my pajamas at last and take A to the drugstore to fill her prescription and then we had to stop at the used furniture/slot car race track place on Haywood to check out this red velvet chair I'd had my eye on (and by the way, that place is excellent and has great stuff and I recommend it highly) it was too late to call and ask the doctor WTF she was thinking. A is going to see her tomorrow, though, so with a little luck all will be put right and she won't commit suicide or start bleeding from various orifices or have her tendons dissolve. We hope.

To cheer her up, I'm taking her and her boyfriend out to that creepy Frank Sinatra themed restaurant in South Asheville. I wanted something dark so nobody could see me with my flu-ish pallor and knotted hair from crawling in and out of bed and A, who is staying in her pajamas, didn't want to run into anyone she knew either. It is tough to celebrate birthdays when one is ill but we are going to do it, by god. I didn't go through 24 hours of labor 26 years ago to just sit idly by with my suicidal thoughts, sniffly nose, sore throat and general malaise. By god, no. We'll eat out if it kills us. Just not somewhere anyone might see us.