Just be glad you're nowhere near me right now.
Sure, I'm still good to look at, but frankly I'm annoying myself to the point that I'd get up and leave the room except that I'd just go right with me.
What began as a chest cold three, count 'em, three weeks ago has devolved, I am told by a licensed medical professional, into pneumonia.
Which came as a bit of a shock, since I've always associated pneumonia with, well, old folks.
But here I am, barely out of my teens and laid low with the awful stuff. And here is a world of constant hacking coughs accompanied by a chest that has apparently been stuffed full of wet cotton and rusty steel wool.
I've been put on Cipro, the same lovely antibiotic that is prescribed for anthrax infections. I can kill things just by walking slowly past them, so potent is the Cipro. Sadly this lethal effect is doing my stomach no good either, but the less said about that the better.
And steroids! More of them. I took seven pills yesterday and overnight I grew horns and learned to scale near-vertical cliff faces with my nifty new hooves. I took six this morning and I'm just back from a run that is a bit of a blur but included parts of France. You'll know the path I took by the dead grass beside the road and the reports of a pale, coughing hoofed thing that smelled of Vicks Mentholatum chest rub and a vague, raw anger.
What I can't do is maintain a coherent train of thought for any sustained length of time. I tried writing a bit, and the results reminded me of that old story about monkeys given typewriters if the monkeys were also slapped in the face before being given bottles of whiskey. It wasn't good.
I did wash clothes and dishes and vacuum. I have to say that Dyson vacuum cleaner is freaking awesome. It will inhale the most amazing objects, including but not limited to, the following:
* entire dishrags
* trade paperbacks
* small Jehovah's Witnesses
* the dog Fletcher's tail (sorry about that, Fletch)
And it looks like the secondary hyperspace navigation module from an Arcturan star cruiser. You just don't often see that in a home appliance.
I'm off to have another coughing fit and watch some Gordon Ramsay on the BBC.
I don't often fall ill, but when I do, I contract pneumonia.
Stay healthy, my friends.
