I promise I'm not ignoring y'all.

pinky swear.

I would like to petition to restart January, please.

First, it was the Big Sad about moving away from my heart-home in the trees.

Then, right about the time I was sick of myself being all mopey, I managed to eat just enough red dye¹ from some Death Oreos™², and spent a few days doped out on Benadryl, scratching at hives. And, of course, dealing with the Benadryl Hangover³.

THEN, just about the time I was feeling a little better, I felt worse. Like, not hivey/allergy worse. But exhausted. Like someone fastened a hose to my side and sucked out every bit of my energy. I was sleeping MANY hours a day⁴, and when I was awake, I was kind of spacy. Coughed a little. Headached a little. Ran hot/cold a little. Nothing dramatic, just bleh.

This morning, though, I woke up and realized my slightly-stuffy nose was making it hard to taste my Corn Pops. I went to look for some decongestant and figured I might as well just rule things out, and since there were some unused tests just sitting here…

Dangit.

I feel okay, though.

Just for my gaggle of Internet Moms⁵ , I really do feel okay. Tired. A little achy. A little snuffly. Coughing a very little bit. But not like last time, when I thought I’d accidentally gargled with ground up glass and was hacking up the insides of my toes all the time. I actually feel better than I did the last time I had the flu, so there’s that.

I’m pretty lucky, in that regard.

I figure I’ve been down with it for about a week or so (if the Big Tired and the cough/sneezing are indications), so I’m probably at the tail end of it now. Luckily, I haven’t gone anywhere since having symptoms, so I haven’t been a plague rat, either.

J’s out on the other coast for the next two weeks, so if I keep wiping things down with Clorox wipes, he should be okay. (He has no symptoms at all.)

But in case you were wondering why I haven’t returned from my Moving Grief with the new and improved attitude, this is why.

Covid Death Cookies.

(Which would make a freaking fantastic band name, btw. Just saying.)

See y’all in 7-10 days. I’m planning to go back to bed and let the white blood cells engage in their unseen war.

Hope you’re all doing well. <3

1. Not the one that got banned. I’m just so special that I’m allergic to the OTHER commonly-used red dye #40. I’m fine with a little, but there’s this weird threshhold where, if I go even a little past it — say, three Death Oreos instead of two — I turn into a giant human-shaped hive. It’s as much fun as it sounds like.

2. In this case, the Death Oreo du jour was the collab between Oreo and Coke. They were kinda gross, with one chocolate cookie, one red cookie, and filling that contained, I kid you not, pop-rocks. I probably should have known they’d be deadly.

3. It’s a Thing for me. There’s a reason my husband labeled the Benadryl box with “WIFE ROOFIES”.

4. This should have been a clue, because I literally sleep maybe five hours a day on a good sleep day. This is up from my youth, when I regularly slept maybe three and a half to four hours at a time. My mom tells stories of getting up in the middle of the night to pee and finding me on my floor, playing quietly at 3 a.m.. I am the reason she has grey hair, most likely.

5. whom I adore for checking in on my hermit-like tailfeathers