I am sitting in my half-lit bedroom, massacring an overripe orange. It does not taste particularly good, and I have peeled it badly. I keep having to pry the segments apart and then they rip and get sticky old juice on my fingers. And I'm trying to use this computer at the same time, so now the keys and touchpad are getting all sticky too. I think I've got the flu, but it could just be a really bad head-cold. I've never had a head-cold before, but I'm pretty sure this is what goes on: It's kind of like my skull is overfull with glue or yogurt (viscosity thereabouts), but my brain is also in there with a tight rubber band around it. Something very unpleasant and disconcerting keeps happening with my eyeballs. I tell myself that they won't actually pop out of my face, though that's what it feels like. The ears, nose, and throat have gone into collaborative revolt. There is also a great deal of sneezing, which feels awesome for a nanonsecond before causing more ocular pressure and general seepage. From the shoulders down, everything's either freezing or roasting, and all of it is sore, stubborn, and totally disgusted with itself. Festering in bed like this, with the heaped covers and crumpled tissues and drawn shutters (not to mention the god awful lozenges), while outside everything is positively suffused with early Spring sunlight, makes me feel like something creepy and antique: a lunatic shut-in, a malarial Roderick Usher.
Today is also Friday the 13th, so there's that sinister feeling in the air. I've already made one outing today, to drive Chui to school. I will make another, to bring her home, and that's it. I don't like being behind the wheel in this condition, especially on Friday the 13th. My peripheral vision is on the fritz and I keep bumping my head on things (appliances, furniture, doorways). I bump my head and then I burst into tears. It's all a bit upsetting. My best friend once went to a homeopathic sinus specialist who inflated tiny balloons in her sinuses in order to cleanse them. The specialist warned my friend that this procedure often resulted in sudden, unexpected waves of emotion on the part of the cleansee. My friend said, "Fine, sure, do your worst." (Or something to that effect.) However, when the first balloon actually went up her nose and did its thing, she felt tremendous pain and then just started sobbing uncontrollably without knowing why. It was intense and suprising, she said, but not very helpful. She didn't go back for the recommended second visit. I am wondering if my own blubbering of late has something to do with the sinuses being out-of-whack. It's either that or pregnancy. Or homesickness. Or the ancestors tormenting me. Probably all of the above.
On another note, Hector just phoned from work to give me some news which seemed, at first, incontrovertibly good: "Cathy", the annoying comic strip that I've loved to hate for over twenty years, will come to an end on October 3rd of this year. There is something both thrilling and sad about this and I need some time to work through these complicated feelings before writing more about it.
