Sick Day [SotCISoaJ]

I am sick.

I hate being sick. It feels like my body is rebelling against itself. I feel like I’m regressing to a younger age; back to a time when I was winy and helpless. I am usually very healthy. Not that I take good care of myself, but I very rarely get sick. So when it does happen, I’m reduced to a quivering mass of phlegm and other unmentionables.

The other night, I wavered between a death-like sleep and a fitful weakness brought on by fever. I swung back and forth between chilly and sweaty; conscious and unconscious; stiff and numb. The next morning, with most of the illness baked out of me, I regained some of my composure. But I still wasn’t well enough to make another trip to Chicago. I had an assignment up there. Well not really an assignment, but a possibility of one. If the photography gods were smiling on me, and the municipal workers were fast enough, I could take pictures of the holiday decorations. But instead I spent part of the weekend in a semi-coherent state.

Sure, I was disappointed, but I suppose I can take one weekend off from thinking about work. I wouldn’t do very well if I wasn’t healthy. And I need to take care of myself by sleeping and what-not. But I sure would have liked to see Chicago in the winter time again. The lights are beautiful against the gray sky and the snow. Although there’s probably no snow yet.

As of now, I am through the haze of fever. But my nose is still leaking and my head is still pounding and my cough is still rasping. Perhaps this just means I’ll be able to make the trip in a few weeks. Maybe by then my pictures will be full of lights glistening off of freshly fallen snow.