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The past two days have been like Ye Olde Rustic House. I've been sick with a minor head cold, that started with my left armpit lymph node being swollen on Saturday and then started to manifest yesterday afternoon right before I took off running to catch a tow truck. But also, its 53 degrees in our apartment. Not because we're suddenly concerned about the gas bill, but because the heater is broken and the radiators have stood cold for two days. The regular maintenance guy came today, but it was beyond his expertise and he said a repair person would come today too, but they didn't. Or if they did, they should get their money back, because its still 53 degrees in the apartment. This wouldn't be such an ordeal if this had been one of the global-warming weekends we've been having all month, but no, of course, it's snowed today and it's dropping down into the teens tonight.

Shortly I'll be reading under the down comforter by the warmth and light of a candle. Too bad I'm bored to death of being in the house. This is the problem with being sick. Well, there are lots of problems with being sick. One is that I spend lots of time at home anyway, so I'm rarely in need of more time here, so I get cranky and anxious, on top of the cranky and anxious that sickness does by making me feel all out of control. because my body is doing things I don't want it to do. I also have that thing where I don't want to be around people when I'm sick, because I'm vulnerable, but then I feel vulnerable so I want to be taken care of. Except I don't. But I do. Really I do. Just, do it from afar. Well, except for when you're petting my head.

Instead I do things like bake cookies in my moments of the day of feeling less sick. Plus, being near the warm oven is good.

I was thinking too, earlier, of being sick as a child, and how I will admit now to having a total "wolf-crying" problem, in that two-thirds of the sick days I took off from school were probably the childhood and adolescent equivalent of 'mental health days', so my mother seemed to always question whether I was really sick, while also never totally challenging me on my need to stay home. I appreciate the latter, but the former has some lasting ramifications, as far as not always being an accurate judge of how sick I really am, of feeling guilty or defensive about being sick, of the whole thing mentioned above about wanting to be left alone when sick. And then today I read William Styron's "Darkness Rising", this book which is really just an essay, about depression (a word he hates), meloncholia, madness and sinking in and getting through and what happened to him and how he got through it, sort of despite the 'care' of doctors and his observations of things in the 80s and how some isht hasn't changed or if part of it has, it hasn't necessarily gotten better. And now I'm thinking about the idea of "incomplete mourning".

I don't know. I think the melatonin is kicking in, and the high from the neti pot cleansing is dropping (man, that isht produces some crazy positive effects on me after a really good thorough washing out of the nose and head), and also my fingers are super stiff because, as I may have mentioned, its 53 degrees inside the apartment.

Also, Inga Muscio is getting on my nerves. Well, her book is. She might be a perfectly lovely three-dimensional person, and that is neither here nor there. (I love that phrase.) Ok, for real, I should go because my brain is going to some quirky places at a fast rate and I'd rather enjoy the show under the covers where I'm warm.