It’s raining, y’all, and my voice has gone froggy, so I’m hiding out in my hotel room, wearing pajamas and waiting for comfort food. Thank god for ice skating on the TV tonight, and also for the balm of adorable babies. Maddie’s hard to take a bad shot of, although I’ve managed a few that were jostly and poorly framed. This one makes me go all eeeee inside, though; almost as good as this or this.

This picture, the one right here:

Is responsible for this earworm. I can only guess that Nyquil and ennui have translated the lyrics to:

Bambi, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be
But my life, my love and my laay-day
Is the sea….

In other words, I’ve bored myself rotten over the past several days of take-to-my-bed-to-stave-off-sickness. My body’s all kinked and coiled, and my pajamas are shiny with stink, and my bangs, who knows what they’re up to, but my head looks like one of those crazy signs at the far edge of nowhere, with a bunch of arrows pointing in every direction. East Get A Grip, 5,000 KM and Dignity, 2,000 Miles Yonder.

My laptop* is on one of those tray tables, the kind of thing on which you bring your mom pancakes on mother’s day (I bought mine for five bucks at a garage sale), and getting myself situated in bed with the proper upright-sitting pillow ballast, and all necessary ointments and lozenges and vitamin C-rich beverages within easy reach, and a charged phone nearby—all without sending the laptop floorward—is a feat of grace and gritted teeth.

Once I’m in, the dogs (who now have free run of the place, which I will pay for later in the currency of tiny, dried turdlettes found in forbidden corners) bound up and demand to be under the covers, between my legs (what can I say, the heart wants what it wants). This means lifting up the table with the laptop while the dogs slowly nose their way under the covers, concentrating all their weight on an ovary or my ever-full bladder, until finally they’re settled and the directed boredom can commence (disk 5 of The Mentalist, page 553 of my latest brainrot thriller, another run through my reader).

Within fifteen minutes, of course, there’s inevitably a noise that only canines or young people can hear, and the dogs go all caged tornado under the covers, demanding to be let out. Poor pups, they’re as mental as I am with all the vigilant napping going on around here. It’s either dead-sleep or alarm barking, up and down, snooze and yap.**

But all this is going to change soon. I’ve got the bathtub running and two hours to get myself scrubbed and upright. That’s right, I’ve got plans to totter around some galleries and eat some African food this evening. The old me would keep right on wallowing, but the new me is going to seize life, embrace life, maybe even take life behind the middle school and give it this not-quite-a-cold I’m working on.

Kiss, Kiss!

*The laptop’s here in bed with me to advance the fiction that I am online and “working.” Mostly, I’m just praying that no one IMs me with any exhausting requests and that the episode of Gossip Girl I just downloaded will play on my new, possibly ganked version of iTunes.

**And if you think all this sounds fun, just wait until tomorrow, when I keep a running tally of every time I have to get up and out of bed to pee. You’ll never look at me (or my shotglass bladder) the same way again.

Ford slays the ladies at his baby book shower yesterday:

He’s working a Dr. Evil’s Newborn Son vibe here, don’t you think? But trust me, this kid’s pure sugar.

I kept my distance, so as not to infect, then came straight home to brew in my own juices some more. It’s day 5 in bed here, but The Subtle Mother just dropped off some homemade chicken soup (plus lotiony Kleenex for less nasal chafing), so RECOVERY IS IMMINENT. Thanks, mom!

Day 3 in bed with my laptop, and I’m curled into a comma by too many pillows, surrounded by a blizzard of kleenex ghosts, with the dogs wrestling at my feet. They are bored with bed, because bed is boring. I would be bored, too, if I weren’t all snuffled up, full of snot and sadness (for reasons I won’t share here, because I DON’T TELL YOU EVERYTHING, INTERNET. There has to be MYSTERY). I have that dire clanging in my sinuses and a ticking in my ears, like underwater stillness, and I remember having this same sickness last year at this time, only I was in San Francisco then, sleeping on an air mattress in my old apartment (which is still empty, but not for long, and I would crawl on glass to go back, to re-fill that space with me and my dogs). I missed a friend’s epic 40th last year, stuck in bed with my laptop and my bored dogs, haunted by the ghosts of sneezes past. This year, I am missing nothing. There is nothing to miss, here in bed, with my sinuses and my sorrows, and my dogs scrabbling around on the floor where I can’t see them. And Archie, I beg of you: No shitting, please. I just don’t have the will to clean up after any of us, here in bed with my headcold and my heartache.

Picture via somewhere yesterday. We’re in an ocean of snot here, and all I see is flotsam to my jetsom.

Shhh, the magic’s still sleeping. And now I have that gaggy tickle somewhere between nose and throat, and there’s a golden river of bad news threatening to drown me. So I’ll just rest my head on the desk a while, before I wake the magic.

Via