Bear flu, Day two

Dammit all to hell! Whatever I've come down with is just not going away. Yesterday morning, I thought my problem was 9/10ths simple exhaustion and nothing a day of sleep wouldn't solve. By the time I got to Monshu's, I realised there was more to it than that: shivers, borderline fever, loss of appetite. Most of the minor symptons have cleared up, but there is this very inflamed patch on my soft palate and every time I swallow, it's like being jabbed there by a fork. It made sleeping difficult because, try as I might, I could not get myself to drool onto the pillow rather than swallowing every few minutes and thereby waking myself up.

I'm not one to go to the doctor with my afflictions, because the response I get is almost always (1) you just have to ride it out or, worse, (2) overmedication (like industrial-strength muscle relaxant for back pain). There's no fever, so this isn't strep or something equally serious, but if it doesn't let up soon, I may take overmedication over near-constant pain.

I've got mixed feelings about being here. On the one hand, it's really sweet to see Monshu's nurturing side (which he's been known to deny he has) come to the fore. On the other, I know he can't sustain this level of solicitousness for long. Plus, I'm totally paranoid about infecting him. At first, we were relatively confident that it was only my exhausted state that made me vulnerable and, as well-rested as he is, he should have nothing to worry about. But beyond the fact that I wouldn't wish this on anyone I loved, this would not be a good week for him to be out. I'm taking precautions like washing my hands a lot, not touching food he'll be eating, not kissing him, etc. but it all somehow feels like whistling in the dark. Bugger.

Imperfect storm

An hour ago, I was catching up on an episode of the X-flies (as Nuphy's daughter used to term it). At the bottom of the hour, the video feed was replaced by a silent still shot of a white-on-gray severe thunderstorm warning. Not five minutes earlier, Monshu called to say he was coming home and I told him, "Don't get wet!" I looked outside and saw golden light over the Loop, to the south, and masses of gray-black clouds everywhere else. I tried to go back to watching the show, but the warning kept reappearing every few minutes. They didn't even keep the audio running! How many times do they have to say "It's going to rain" when I can look out the fucking window and see that for myself? At least five times, apparently; after that, I'd missed so much exposition that there was little point in watching further.

It was a while still before the clouds burst. Actually that's misleading; rain began to fall silently at first. About ten minutes ago, we had a single flash of lightning and a crack of thunder as loud as an explosion in the street, but there's only been a couple thunderclaps since then and the rain is already starting to let up. At its height, there were scattered among the rainfall huge white drops that looked like half-melted snowflakes. Normally, I'd be excited about watching a storm, but fitful sleep has left me out of it. Furthermore, I'm unaccountably anxious about Monshu getting home. Silly, I know--a brush with death like that experienced by vianegativa's boyfriends some weeks back is highly unlikely--but I will be so relieved to see the old White-Haired One cross the threshold.