slow rise

It’s really a pity that the entire process of feeling ill prevents you from enjoying the niceties that occasionally come from snagging the latest and nastiest bug to go around. Who in their right mind wouldn’t enjoy being allowed to curl up on one’s spouse and having one’s hair lazily played with while watching Buffy reruns?

“Right mind,” of course, being contingent on silly things like maintaining a constant body temperature of no more than 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The addition of even one or two measly little degrees can be enough to coagulate mental proteins like so many eggs for scrambling, resulting in telephone conversations that are addled, utterly stupid, and (blessedly) forgotten almost immediately.

Poor Jeremy. He was the recipient of tonight’s Addled Phone Call. I think my conversation stayed in the realm of generally-accepted English syntax, but I think the actual content may have left something to be desired.

Were I not feverish (and, therefore, capable of actually caring) I would grow incredibly annoyed with my current case of slow-wittedness. According to my own slightly-coagulated brain, the process of dealing with someone undergoing the slow rise of a fever has a lot in common with downshifting a car that’s speeding down a hill: you force the gears to turn more and more slowly until the car / the friend / the semi-coagulated brain protein is capable of handling the current situation.

In other words, speak slowly enough and—hopefully—I’ll eventually catch on and figure it all out. In the meantime, settle back with a fizzy drink and be amused as I fumble for my words.

After all, you know it’s going to be one of those evenings when you sit at your computer desk, tapping the tendon below your kneecap in time with the current Underworld song because you find watching your leg twitching in time with the music to be strangely amusing.

Now imagine me trying to listen to Spock’s Beard’s new double concept album, Snow. Jeff was enjoying it, and, admittedly, so was I, but his analyses had more to do with harmony and rhythm, and mine all seemed to contain the phrase “Fire bad. Tree pretty.”

Yep, time for another nap. Preferably before the world gets any more amused at my antics.

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