got the grippe
YESTERDAY
Although I knew the weather was cold, windy, and generally Chicago-style pigshitty from my morning commute, I still wanted to go out at lunch. I guess I took all those stupid lifestyle columns to heart. The ones about stretching one’s deskbound legs and smelling fresh air at lunchtime. No! Don’t listen! It was crap. I even lugged all my Bookmooch books to the post office, thinking the leg-stretching could include an actual errand, and the kiosk was broken. The display said that it currently could not weigh packages and dispense appropriate postage, which is the main function of the fucking thing. I refuse to stand in a long post office line, which is always filled with the hoi polloi because (a) they are trying to do insanely complicated things like express-mail a foreign-currency money order to a post office box in Sudan, oh and while they’re here they might as well change their address and apply for a passport; or (b) they are too stupid to figure out the kiosk. Sorry Bookmoochers, you will have to wait a few days for your books. May I remind you that we all get what we pay for.
The windy cold bothers me more than it might otherwise because I have a Mystery Ailment. Starting the evening of Easter I came down with a fever, generalized body aches. Not so weird, viruses happen. The weird part is that then my skin got all red, like a sunburn, and all my joints swelled up. I had to jam my feet into oversized, un-cute shoes and nervously turn my wedding ring on my sausage finger every five seconds, just to be sure I still could. The sunburn thing went away but I am still more puffy and waterlogged than I’d like to be. (Amount of puffy and waterlogged I would like to be: NONE.)
Doctors just LOVE it when you internet-diagnose yourself. Doctors are all like, “By all means, Google your symptoms, it’s not like I went tens of thousands of dollars into debt and lost hundreds of hours of sleep passing medical school or anything like that.” This may have been why my doctor reacted with measured calm instead of wild enthusiasm when I contacted her to say that eureka, I have the adult version of Fifth Disease! There is not a lot she can do for me anyway, so I am free to take ibuprofen, go to bed early, and show up next week for a blood test if I am still typing with these curled crab claws.
I DO NOT HAVE MY HEALTH, BUT I HAVE LIT-CRIT NICK CAVE
Being all fatigued and virus-infested has predictably given me great dreams, though, including one where Nick Cave and I were taking turns reading feminist psychological goth-horror classic “The Yellow Wallpaper” out loud to Nora. I remember that Nick Cave got up and acted out the ending of the story by creeping around the edges of the room. Later he and I were lounging outdoors on my new patio furniture and smoking cigarettes (naturally).
I SEE IT THROUGH A TELESCOPE
Home life has become so much more hilarious now that Nora is making “Uranus” jokes. Hardy har har! “Liquor in the front, poker in the rear” is still inappropriate if you ask me, but she may be ready for “Rectum, nearly killed him” and things of that nature.
—mimi smartypants is pale and wan.