a wolf angel is not a good angel

I spent the entire bloody day shopping today. It was successful, mostly, though I need shoes. But it was long. I am most excited by the hair clips (shiny! sparkly!) that I got from a secondhand store that just opened up nearby. They’re a pair, which is very hard to find, and they have a weird clasp mechanism that I prefer to a normal barrette, and they’re all fake jewelled. (As someone with huge amounts of hair, anything that isn’t very glitzy gets very lost.)

Actually, I don’t really remember what else I got, other than some basic shirts from H&M, because I am so excited by the hair clips. Oh, jeans and brown cords. And a Mexican hot chocolate mix, for those of us (the sane ones) who like hot chocolate.

You know, if the writer’s strike doesn’t end (sigh), maybe I’ll actually watch The Wire. Or Boston Legal. Or the second season of Life on Mars. Or The Tudors. Or endless reruns as background noise, whichever.

I got three new library books today, and I am so excited to read all of them (which I am sure will lead to disappointment) that I can’t decide and so I haven’t actually started any. But the anticipation is also nice.

Pretty much I am better (some coughing, but not as terrible), and I am much more optimistic than I have been lately, in the sense of the past many months. I don’t know I’ll wake up optimistic tomorrow, but it’s nice even for just today.

The library has the new Jeanette Winterson book, even though it isn’t yet published in Canada. I am entirely unclear about why they bothered to go and find it from the UK, but I don’t care so much, because I get to go read it this weekend. Oddly, they seem to have placed it in the science fiction section, which may be accurate for the book, but is unusual for the library, which shoves everything possible into fiction or mystery.

I am now down to a terrible even for me cough. It’s only occasional, but several times a day. This continues to suck. I was up all night almost last night because I kept coughing myself awake. The internet, however, suggests that a good cough suppressant is dark chocolate, and I am willing to give it a shot. Today I had my first real meal since Monday, and Monday was the first meal I’d had since Friday. (I’ve been big on saltines.) It was very exciting.

I’ve got stuff I need to do really this weekend, so I’d better be entirely better soon. Otherwise I’ll keep complaining. Not that I won’t keep complaining anyhow, but I could use a new topic. (One that isn’t on my daily-growing unbloggable list. This secrecy thing is getting worse, not better. Maybe I should write about that from my sickbed.)

I think I am finally on the mend, after what must have been both a flu AND a cold, and after several mugs of ginger tea, which settles the stomach even as it burns off the inside of my mouth.

And so I bring a mini book review.

Bryce Courtenay, Sylvia. Completely atrocious. Mostly I enjoy his books, and even this one sped itself right along, but it was terrible anyhow.
Eileen Favorite, The Heroines. Great promise, but it rather petered out at the end. Somewhat reminiscent of The Eyre Affair, but less funny.
Ruth Rendell, Not in the flesh. One of her less good books. I think she’s running out of Wexford plots.
Nikita Lalwani, Gifted. A somewhat sad book about a first generation immigrant in Wales, pushed into doing math very young.
Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts. A very very good book (apparently to be made into a movie with Tilda Swinton, though I cannot imagine who she will play), about someone who has had his memory eaten by a conceptual shark, and his quest to find out what that means. The writing is adequate at best (with flashes of much better), but the narrative structure is clever as all hell, and the whole thing is lots of fun.

This stupid bug is dragging on forever. I have no idea what the hell is wrong. I am all stuffed up and coughing, and also nauseated. This means I am taking approximately 6 half-baths a day. I’m sticking to eating only saltines and drinking water and apple juice. So far this hasn’t helped, but it hasn’t hurt, I don’t think. Anyhow I don’t actually want anything else. Except perhaps to be able to sleep until I am all better, instead of tossing and turning half the night (whence half my baths).

Oddly, the cat was already in the bathroom, quite annoyed when I turned on the taps today. She just sat there and stared. I don’t normally mind when she’s in the bathroom with me, but usually she naps on the mat, not glares at me with an evil eye.

This is really unpleasant.

test

My cold has morphed into a flu, or a cold-plus-high-fever. It is unsurprisingly quite unpleasant. My ears hurt. I am always out of breath, except for a very few moments if I’m in a steamy room. (I know, no evidence etc, but I do feel better when I do it, and since sitting in a bathtub doesn’t have many risky side effects, other than the not unlikely chance of my falling asleep in the bath — I do always wake up before I drown, so far — I go for it, damn the research.)

I did some of what I had to get done today, but I think that my brain is too addled to do much more of it. Someone burnt something on the stove, or melted it, and the smell of the smoke made me (even more) ill. I’m not sure what it was, but I can still see a slight haze in the air which I am quite sure is not hallucinated.

I now have a cold and slept all day. I still can’t breathe, but I am way less tired than I have been lately, what with the many extra hours of sleep I got, finally getting me near caught up. We will see how this works out if I am awake all night (again), but I am vaguely hopeful. Especially if I can figure out the best pills to take so I can breathe overnight.

Part of the issue, I know, is that it’s too damn dry all the time. Another issue is that I do get sick all the time, yes.

I ended up watching ‘The Holiday’, which was a fine, ordinary chick flick. I watched Waitress the other day, and though it was very close to being very good, I had a few issues. I would have liked some context for why Nathan Fillion was cheating on his apparently very nice wife, I despised the fact that one of the friends found that hey, stalker boy really is a nice guy who she loves, and I am beyond bitter that I didn’t get any of those pie recipes.

Can’t breathe again. This is so much fun, really. I’d take the flu any day over a cold.

• she eats about twice every three days, having hit her normal underweightness instead of skeletal.
• she suddenly has a pronounced limp, which needs to be looked at by a vet, because I can’t see anything obviously wrong.
• her new favourite treat is licking skin cream off my hands.
• she likes to nap in a huge pile of books, which looks both sweet and incredibly uncomfortable.

I am debating resolving to be less secretive this year, but I really doubt if I can manage that. It’s so ingrained — and I have no idea, anymore, what I’m worried about if I don’t keep secrets, but just in case, I’ll never tell anyone anything.

This serves me about as well as one might expect.