Amanda vs. The Lurgie

Since last we met I have:

Attended a folk music concert to hear Christine Lavin play and sing for us. It was great. In an audience participation moment I won a children's book for knowing the word syzygy and how to spell it. I have depths of unplumbed trivial knowledge that comes in handy sometime. My favorite moment of the show may have been when she did a song about how bad sitting is for you and got the whole audience up doing silly dance moves with her. The funniest moment was when she sang the first line of the Drunk Puppy Song. She had to stop until we got ourselves under control and stopped shrieking with laughter.

Attended most of my quilt guild's Friday and Saturday Come and Go retreat. I got a tonne (I like the way that looks better than the rather bald, sad little ton) of work done. I finished putting the binding on my blue storm at sea quilt. I stenciled some fabric with the Extraordinary blessings from Sharon Shinn's Troubled Waters. I made 8 quilt blocks out of a Civil War reproduction fabric and cut out the pieces for 12 more. I was a busy little quilting do-bee.

I also was a very sick person for the last half of that retreat. I have a cold (just a cold, I had a negative strep test) and I felt worse and worse and worse as I sewed. I finally gave up and came home and went to bed, where I have been, more or less constantly for the past two days. I've snuffled, sniveled, and hacked my way through half a box of tissues. My lips are chapped, my nose is raw, I sound as crackly as the Crypt Keeper, I am not a Thing of Beauty at the moment.

When characters in great literachoor are sick, have you ever noticed that they are never nastily sick? They are interestingly wan and pale, and are able to recline artistically on the pillows, looking lovely and brave. Marianne Dashwood may have been gravely ill with a fever after Mr. Willoughby cruelly spurned her, but not once did Jane Austen mention green phlegm. Her characters are too refined for that. They had agues or fevers, I have what my dear physician friend calls "the lurgie." It feels as awful as it sounds.

I did sleep much of the day away today, sorry MLK Jr, I wish I had done more to memorialize you! It helped though, tonight I am able to believe in a world in which I will continue to feel better. Sometime during my hours of sleep today I think I turned the corner in this particular battle with the lurgie.  Aldous Huxley said: "That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep." And I agree with him about that. Work would have been impossible today, but tomorrow I think I'll be able to face it without scaring my fellow laborers.