All I know is, it's the way you make me feel

We can haz symptoms, or maybe they're side effects.

Woke up this morning - at four-thirty this morning, waaah - feeling a little sick and with a raging headache. The which has not abated. I have taken stomach-settling medicine, one kind of painkiller and the poisonous antibiotic; now I am going for another kind of painkiller. First cocktail of the day: the true breakfast of champions.

Add all this to the aching-of-joints that I live with anyway, and it is curiously like having a mild flu. A constructed flu, an artefact. I don't know which of what is symptoms of infection and which is side effect of evil medication (or of course alcohol withdrawal, but we're not thinking about that); all I know is, I feel rotten. From the inside.

Still: autumn's in the air and so is Karen, she's on her way. Be here by evening. And Jo Walton has (all unwittingly, I am sure) written a poem to welcome her, and I am doing what I can on my own behalf. Bread is in the oven, beans have soaked overnight. I have a broom and a sponge and virtuous intentions. The boys have their instructions ("no biting, or no sossidge", essentially; this of course is waste of breath - there will be biting, and there will be sossidge; we all of us know all of this - but one has to show willing). All shall yet be well. Except for me, I shall be ill, but hey. If I could find a brave face in this chaos, I'd put it on.

It's no more impossible than the other thing

Karen is here, so that's okay, then. Sorted. We have watched Firefly, and I am putting her to bed with Turkish Delight and an indeterminate number of cats. (She thinks zero is an achievable number.)

In other news, your nose and mouth are connected! I have proved it. Every time I blow my nose, I smell the antibacterial wadding in my tooth-socket. My tongue is more or less inured to it now, tho' no food tastes like anything, so I'm not much interested in that. Am swallowing pills and tea, mostly.

I think I hear cats discussing its closedness with Karen's door. They won't like that. Barry has been sleeping recently on the wardrobe (it is a high place, and generally Mac-free, except when Mac goes up there looking for a fight). They like guests, but not ones who erect forcefields. Guests are for bothering. There may be yowls in the darkness, and much scratching at woodwork. Fortunately, I think she's so tired she will not be hearing them.