Sometime around Random-Midday-Time on Friday, I slept. It wasn’t a very good sleep since my body was raging at about 102.8 and I’d failed at sleeping much the night before. I had to marinade myself in Ny-quil just to force sleep upon me since my eyeballs felt like they were boiling out of my head when I was awake. And of course, for no apparently reason, my chest was inducing coughing just when sleep started to creep in. So I slept, but I did not sleep well.

When I did sleep, I had feverish dreams that didn’t make a lot of sense. At one point I dreamed that I was standing in my mind, which was hardly more than a big blank space waiting to be filled. And my mind spoke to me, which echoed and vibrated not only in my head but in the big blank room around me and I suppose, in my head that I was also standing. It was like I went to sleep and woke up as Charlie Kaufman. I don’t know what my mind said to me, but I’m pretty sure it was deep.

The weekend was an endless current of backlogged CSI episodes and 80s movies that happened to be playing on TVland. Sometimes I watched HGTV but I couldn’t stand it for more than a few minutes at a time. The How-To information was far too practical for my boiling brain and my head immediately rejected it. I found comfort only briefly in David Bromstad - for his biceps and pretty face and not for his actual show. Sorry David.

I did enjoy quite a bit of icecream this weekend, which is not something I normally enjoy in great quantities. The cold icecream felt amazing on my throat, and since it was for medicinal purposes, it didn’t quite feel like I was cheating on my diet. It was like surgeon-general approved and calorie-free. Yum Yum.

I was almost productive though, in that my friend got my essay back to me after some edits (and some silly mistakes on my part) but I have done nothing good with it except to respond to him with a heartfelt “Thanks.” I want to do something with it but I’m afraid of what my addled brain might choose to come up with. So I’ll wait another day. Besides, my editor-friend made note of a certain “smugness” present in the essay, of which I’m often found guilt of with my husband who is sometimes horrified by the amount of smugness I can muster on a daily basis, and trying to tone it down while feverish and sick might actually make it worse. (“Women are condescending, backstabbing, antithetical monsters. We’re all blood and guts, dripping from pronounced canines, cannibals of our own sex.”)

I’m at work but hardly working. I make only minor decisions and blow my nose every couple of minutes. My co-workers eye me as if I carry the plague and have purposefully clocked in just to give it to them. I’m like the precursor to the zombie plague.

I’m at work, but as you can see, I am hardly working.