That Hoary Cripple, With Malicious Eye

I've spent the last six days in bed! Or on the lounge! Same thing! I was so bored today I nearly painted my nails! Black, but still! I feel very weird! I'm in at work tonight! Not sure this is a good idea! I have fifteen minutes before the trauma specimen finishes and I have to do a crossmatch! No pressure! I think I may lose my voice! That would be trouble! Semaphore doesn't work down phones! I've tried! The phone wound up rebounding into my face after catching on my out-flung arm! These exclamation marks are giving me a headache!

The fog has settled in for the night; the streetlights are hazy and soft, illuminating little. The road, bordered by untended grassy fields, dips ahead into the black. The mist catching on the grasses looks like frost; cold and breathtaking. Visibility is at ten metres and dropping: a man stands in the long grass by the side of the road. Unseen, he leans down to fuss at something at his feet, then looks at the road. He can hear nothing, but the fog - the blasted fog - could be hiding anything. He moves in front of the unseen bundle and reaches down. He pulls ropes up to his shoulder, turns and pulls the bundle behind. It could be a rolled-up rug. It could be.

Husbandly caught the lurgy as well, but he, natch, is shaking it off after a day or so. Shouldn't there be some rule about taking it in turns for illnesses? Not that I wish him sick, but it seems a bit unfair when I subsist on four hours sleep a day Mondays and Tuesdays while toddling off to work all night. Ah. Perhaps I have put my finger on the problem. Hmmm. Will have to consider options, yes?

The three sisters tended house for their ailing mother, a cliche in four parts. None of the sisters married; their mother and eventually they themselves discouraged such things. They grew their own vegetables and took in sewing when times were lean, or, not so lean, for special occasions. Over the years their prowess with needles earned them celebrity. They might have been known as witches, else.

My ten minutes is well up and has been for a while; there's been a problem. Now I have to wait for a new sample. Lucky me. I shall leap (leap!) into action when it arrives. I really do need a life instead of alternating odd paragraphs. I would have liked to have taken some more time off but ditto the needing a medical certificate and unable to get to doctor; I'm not so badly off as I was, I'm just tired. Or...

There were cigarette butts jammed into a styrofoam cup by the back door, squashed into dirty liquid that might have been coffee. She hoped none of the staff knew she came out here, but didn't care enough to stay inside. She could sit by that bed for only so long before the walls closed in, the smell became unbearable, the scream inside her head no longer un-screamed. The hospital was tiny - he should have been flown out to Sydney yesterday. There was a storm, she could feel the acid dripping off the words - more important people than her husband would be flown out first. Then the storm. He was still here and no longer conscious.

Ferrets dance in my fevered brain and I feel I should explain; the darkness and dreck. Nah. I just like the word ferret. I wish I had brought my pillow tonight though, if only to be able to rest. Every now and then. Between samples, as it were. At least I no longer have to do fertility counts (yes, that is what it sounds like - Gentlemen, if your swimmers were slow, I salute you - they were easier to count). I sometimes miss some of the things I've done in my career. I told small lad about being an enucleator for the Eye Bank (yes, removal of eyes for donation). It was a brief period. His response? "Yuck." Succinct. I like it.

I hear the sea booming at the shoreline through the crack of the window and wonder if I should be finding it relaxing. I smell jasmine from the trellis just under the window: the night should be warmer so the scent of jasmine can herald some promise. The smell of flowers should always be warm, because the first time I smelt gardenia was at a funeral. The body was cold so the smell was stale.

See? Lots of detail in the unwritten words. It is long past midnight now, I had to break off to do all sorts of work and ... stuff. I am going to put this in under Septemeber, because I like temporal upsets (it's like I have my own TARDIS). I would sing if I had a song to sing, but in lieu of singing I shall spare your eardrums and simply say, if they held upper-class twit of the year, someone would claim discrimination. It would be an open event for twits of all socioeconomic dispositions. There's a thought, yes?

'Tis the Times' Plague, When Madmen Lead the Blind

Ridiculous things I feel guilty about today:

I called in sick for work yesterday, even though

I've been sick for four days, flat on my back with fever, laryngitis and sore throat

I haven't cooked dinner for four days

I haven't done the ironing.

I'm still not terrific today, but I doubt I'll get in to see my doctor. I can't have more than one night off without a medical certificate, which is a great way to encourage Dudley Doo-rights to come in, even when they feel like death, and are going to infect the rest of the staff. Colour me collapsing if I am as sick as I feel.

I tried to have a shower yesterday, but it was too hard to stand in one place while I washed, so I had the quickest bath ever. Baths, in my opinion, should be bubbled, candle-scented and furnished with a good book. Therefore they are always an hour long. Not yesterday, and I was toying with the idea of hacking all my hair off so I could stop the sweaty-haired lout feeling every time I turned my head on the pillow. I've worked my way through nearly all of the drugs in my drug bowl. I have a fruit bowl on top the microwave full of drug packets. Something in druggy literature must have dripped through, but it's not as fun as it sounds. No party packs of 'ludes, coke or tabs of questionable origin yet delirious effects in our household. Dammit.

Small lad scored this one on Friday and the poor mite simply slept for two days. He still has moments of looking peaky, but is otherwise fine, lucky for me, because staggering around yesterday to get his lunch and even conversation (such as it was) was getting a bit much. Today small one (for whom I am going to have to find a new soubriquet, since he's not so little anymore) is off to vacation care with the Y! M! C! A! (do the arm movements for me, would you? my joints still hurt), while I sleep off the day. And hopefully the last of the illness.

I'll try my doctor shortly, but given my luck last time, I think it's time for a new doctor. It's still early in the season yet.

I had plans for this five days off, which weren't terribly ambitious. Strangely none of those happened, what with me in bed all the time. As much as I'd like to be all upbeat and attempting poetical, really, I feel like dogshit and all over having a whinge. Plus even laughing hurts, or induces really painful coughing. I have hayfever at the moment too (say hey! to hayfever) and when I sneezed yesterday, I thought I'd blown out the back of my nose. You know, the bit where your nasal passages meet the roof of your mouth? That bit. Ouch.

I keep reading things weirdly too, so I couldn't escape into a good book. Or any book. I tried starting Sewer, Gas and Electric: the Public Works Trilogy but couldn't get past page four because my eyes were sliding all over the page. I looked up at this entry and though I had planes for this five days off, which makes no sense at all: our driveway is too steep and small for that sort of thing, though it might have shut up the screaming neighbours for five seconds. Not the same lot as previously reported (although they still feature), another lot.

I had an extravaganza of a long dream last night involving the show Medium, poisoned food that Joe Dubois kept eating and some kind of barbed-wire made of cooch grass. And there was unlabelled tinned food. It must have been delirium, because I'm pretty sure I surfaced a few times in there to roll over and tug my sweaty hair out from my neck. Or from my earring. Or off my face.

Cue this morning and the boys ran around getting ready to go to the Y! M! C! A! (ditto re arm movements please) while I slobbed out in bed wondering if I could manage getting up today. I'll need a cup of tea soon, so there's an incentive. I'd like to make mozzarella-filled meatballs with a tomato and bocconcini salad for dinner tonight (plus the makings will go off soon if I don't get to them), another incentive, of a doubtful nature, since it involves lying in bed all day in hopes of being well enough to get up later.

I think I'll go back to watching Castle and drifting off. Sound good? I thought so too.

My Little Horse Must Think It Queer

I wish to sleep far more than I do. Failing time I would choose to sleep more deeply and all-round under the radar. Today's carnival of dreams involved Nathan Fillion looking concerned, but I could only see half of his face - as if I was too short and trying to see him across a shiny table. His face was reflected in the surface with something strange about his mouth. I climbed on something to see better and he didn't have a mouth, it was a black concrete railway tunnel. He held it open and I kept waiting for the scream, but there were only whispers, dark and deep, dry and dead, his eyes were dead, but it wasn't him it was a blonde man whose eyes should have been red. Then I was standing in the lab trying to spray the air with deodorant but I was holding the can in some spastic way so I sprayed my fingertips and got that foaming-because-you've-hit-to-close-to-the-nozzle.

Sleeping during the day isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I found a note to myself about zombies feasting on brains, with no tie to Nathan Fillion so far as I'm aware. I can't figure out the appeal of les zombis to anyone since I find them pretty naff (I have seen the enemy and he is a shambling corpse). The potential for metaphor is enormous, if completely unsubtle and lost in the bits-keep-falling-off-and-there-are-fluids-and-teeth! I have enough fluids, including other people's, to deal with, thank you very much. Besides, imagine the smell.

I have rediscovered Robert Frost (and apologia of a not very formal nature to anyone looking for more Robert Frost than my titles and this paragraph). I have words singing through my head when I'm not asleep. That it may be preventing my own use of words is troubling me only slightly. The music of words is enough for anyone if they know how to listen and the woods are lovely, dark and deep.

For Christmas I will be getting a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver - Tenth Doctor - which I suspect will be a boomerang back to small lad since he was supposed to hide it while I forgot about it when it arrived. Instead I had a rehash of "Partners in Crime" in small lad-speak. He wants to try the pointing of two sonic devices together. His sonic screwdriver - Eleventh Doctor - is now part of his school kit, in that it goes in the side pocket of his bag and gets carried everywhere. I love that he lives in his head.

Plumber's cracks abound around me at the moment. There is a lot of work going on around the lab and at home there have been workmen. Of the plumber's crack variety, not the serious eye candy sort. Dammit.

Once upon a time there was a frog who had once been a parrot. He also tried out monkey-ness, being a teapot, half-a-bee, a barfly and eventually gave up to live in a puddle. The end.

I Have Stood Still and Stopped the Sound of Feet

I have a notebook in my lap, torch in one hand and my pen in my teeth whenever I have to clap. I sit in a darkened high school auditorium, with husbandly twiddling his thumbs next to me. We sit in the mosh pit, though I doubt it ever gets used as such.

On stage, years three-four-five-six are performing in the annual school musical and small babies are crying throughout the audience. The lighting cues are being missed, and the kids are bravely carrying on, singing their hearts out and barely forgetting their lines. The microphones the leads are using are screeching occasionally and still an improvement on the matinee last week. Unfortunately the bitchy lead (who must be wearing the latest and greatest brands, and pity the poor fools who aren't - to wit, the leads) has no microphone, so we're all missing some dramatic tension on that one.

The younger grades were on at the beginning and will come on for the big finish ("Up In Lights", "Can't Stop the Music" and some tripe called "Pots and Pans"). At the moment they're in the balcony above us all and the volume from up there is getting louder at every cheer and clap. I'd like to think they're really enjoying the show but chances are it is the influx of sugar at intermission from the cupcake stall.

Small lad is cross with me because I wouldn't let him get a cupcake - the line was out the door - and then he was cross because he wanted to go home and I wouldn't let him do that either. I am a mean mother.

The mum-and-brood who were sitting next to us in the first half have run away. I hope it had nothing to do with the juvenile note passing going on between husbandly and myself. Or rather, from me to him. As he twiddled his thumbs. Seriously, he does that.

In front of us is a lovely little girl who might be three. I seem to have made a friend. So far she has told me her whole family's names and now we're on to the plot of the Lion King. Now she's showing me some very nifty dance moves.

The action of the play is winding up on stage. Dad of the bitchy lead (who I'm pretty sure played a similar role last year) has just come out on stage and read her the riot act, including the priceless gem of "My daughter, a snob" while he hangs his head. I can't help but think that he's come to his parenting late since he's mentioned several times before this as buying her anything she wants.

Oh, the small kids are being moved back onto the stage and my friend in front of me is showing me the splits, some nifty hand movements and just asked me to spot her while she climbs on the chair. Glad to, keed.

Small lad is on stage now and has his tense face on, oh dear. It turns out later that he is very tired, but right now I'm trying to will happy thoughts at him.

I have more, but in reality I type in the fluorescent lights of the lab and I have things to do: thrills (well, blood) galore and Monty Python playing in the background. He likes traffic lights.

The Mirror [Not] Crack'd

I read a description in a book a few months ago, somehow fascinating and repellent: "...ornate, abstractly phallic orifices". What is an abstract phallus? Is it a metaphorical penis? The kind that women of a ballsy nature supposedly have, or am I confusing my metaphorical body parts? While we're about it, what is a phallic orifice? Blame Kevin J. Anderson.

It puts me in mind of a Lalique homage, a fountain, in charcoal cement, oddly smoothed: grey concrete paving in a cold canyon between black skyscrapers. There are no seats. Men and women are here, not gathered, but not wandering; standing still in deep shadow. The light is that of dawn, but darkness holds sway here. The men wear black suits, black shiny shoes, white shirts and black ties. The women wear black suits with knee-length skirts; their shoes are flat; their hair is long but sternly fashioned. They all look cold between the black glass.

Water gushes, steaming, from the fountain. Standing close to the fountain is warm in spite of the dampness from it. No-one stands close. That way lies madness.

Hello, it's been a while, I'll be a little weird this morning.

Creepy fragments are shooting through my head this morning. ("Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a small cottage, and her husband beat her.") Don't ask me, occasionally my head just comes up with this sort of thing, although the rhythm of that sentence comes from Neil Gaiman's American Gods. The story of the twins for those in the know ("...the rest is just detail."). The woman in the cottage lives alone, just to confuse the issue. It might be in fragments, but there's an awful lot of detail in the unwritten words.

It's early in the morning, husbandly has left for work and small lad sleeps, sprawled in a warm bed. I have hay fever and am trying not to sneeze - I don't want to wake him.

I have housework and sleeping before paid work to consider for the day, but a twitching in my fingertips that wants me to type, to write something, anything, even if the ideas cupboard is full of fragments and Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" keeps hovering at the edge of my mind.

In a reflective mood I carry on, even if he lied in every word and looked askance to see the effects: in my case it's statistically more likely that she lied. Most of my friends and acquaintances are girls (of varying ages and probably not qualifying for the soubriquet of "girl").

Labels only matter if the substance of them is wrong, and to my mind we're all kids yet. Why not? It isn't a matter of being a child but rather retaining childhood's filters, seeing the world anew every time. That I'm a grown woman with a child of my own makes no difference that I can see. Even in those times when I have to be the grown up and responsible. That's part of the fun too.

The cat sits on the table outside, puffed out and cold looking; while she would like to be patted, and warm, if I bring her inside I'll score another puncture as she tries to bite me. She tolerates me, but it's husbandly she truly loves. There are birds squawking rather than singing in this post-dawn apocalypse. I don't know why "apocalypse" seems right and the word itself looks wrong the longer I look at it. I keep waiting for the steel drum to start, but then realise that I'm thinking of calypso music, with a quick cross-reference to Pirates of the Caribbean and weird crab things. Full of fragments, that's my head this morning.

I could go like this all day, but prosaically I have to consider the morning-before-school routines and I want to post this because I'm tired of coming across this blog in corners as something undone and waiting. I like talking, even in the written word, and that this is not so much a conversation as a whisper in your ear is of no moment. Whispers, intimate things, reaching out in the dark (I don't care that it's dawn here, whispers should always happen after lights out, the best way to share secrets). This whisper reaches out to you, to stir not response but reflection; man, do I have my freak on today.