I’b still sick.
Everything moved into my chest yesterday afternoon, so while I no longer feel like I’m holding my inflated head on a long string, it hurts to breathe. Coughing, which is what breathing is right now, is unspeakable.
I actually took a rare sick day so I could fester at home instead of infecting everyone. And I’m also going to the doctor later this morning, just in case it’s “walking pneumonia,” a misnomer if ever I heard one.*
In the meantime, I’m reading over what I’ve written for Fun Project the past two days, while I was coming down with The Ick.
I’ve heard some writers say that they don’t even try to write while they’re sick, while others forge ahead. I tend to forge, not because (or just because) I’m under self-imposed deadlines, but because the results of writing with an oxygen-starved, mucus-stuffed brain are often wonderfully surreal.
This time, all my typos are somehow related to the letter R. The action scene appears to have been storyboarded by Escher—or the gunman really is lefthanded, short, and standing on his head—and I’ve also been channeling Raymond Chandler. Or, I suppose, RRRaymond Chandlet.
A mysterious redhead of the female variety has popped up in my hero’s motel room with a Glock and several questions he’s not about to answer. Since the previous ten chapters are building up a present day heist caper with moments of slapstick, I’m not sure what this noir doll thinks she’s doing there.
If the doc puts me on meds, I suppose we’ll never know.
At this point, I think I can live with that.
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*That sound you just heard was my friend Grace falling over in shock. Outside of checkups, I don’t go to the doctor for anything less than, say, dislocated metatarsals. In the whispered words of my mother and grandmother, sitting in a waiting room for something that chicken soup and rest should cure is admitting defeat. Sorry Mom—I yield.
Earful of Cider 