Flu Flies Back

The flu, annoyed (apparently) with my previous post (about how the flu had flown), swooped back in for a return engagement the past few days, sitting on my shoulder, chirping snidely, taking occasional bites out of my face and ego.

I'm feeling better today (Monday), but I will not say a thing about that Evil Avian (all right, you can delete that Evil part ... J/K) for fear that he/she/it will flap back with more crap for me to endure.

I've been out of the house just once since late last week, and that was yesterday (Sunday) when Joyce and I made a swift and desperate run to the grocery store to replenish our dwindling supplies. She, too, has been struggling with the Evil Avian (and she loves all other birds). That forty-five minutes at the grocery wore me out so thoroughly that I dozed and napped most of the rest of the day.

This morning, though (with a temperature in the balmy low 30s), I decided I was going to make my customary trek over to Open Door Coffee Co., which I did, wondering all the way if a Certain Bird were hovering near, waiting for a chance to flutter back and take a few more bites of my face.

But, no, not so far ...

I was at the shop from about 7-9:30 (my usual time). I read the Times, read 50 pp of The Portrait of a Lady, a novel I'm re-reading because I so much loved the recent sequel, John Banville's Mrs. Osmond. Portrait is a long novel--and I still have about 100 pages to go, even though I've read, oh, 10,000 or so.

It's the kind of text that forces a reader to go slowly. Sometimes I will turn a page and will see, on the two subsequent pages now revealed to me, that there are no paragraph breaks--no conversation---nothing to make the two-page journey, well, easy--or, in current jargon, "reader friendly."

And so I take a deep breath, tell my eyeballs to be patient, and on I go, advancing limb by limb along James' tangled tree, eventually arriving somewhat nearer the trunk. And (I hope) wiser for having done so.

I turn the page.

No paragraph breaks ... deep breath ...

Actually, I'm glad I'm able to take a deep breath at all this Monday morning. For the past few days any deep breath has been followed immediately by a hacking sound from my chest--and by a proud cackle from that nearby Evil Bird that flu back into my life for a few days--as if I need yet another reminder of human fragility and mortality!

PS--And, yes, I did get a flu shot this year--as I have done every year for the past few decades. First time I've had the flu since I began the injections back in the 1990s.