Quiet

8:47 p.m.

Sunday I came down with the black throat plague that's been going around here. And the entire COUNTRY. My voice in the early stages was very similar to Marge Simpson's. Now I have lost my voice entirely. And it hurts. A lot. And is swollen. A lot. I've been going to work and then have been sent home after a few hours, which I believe is mostly because I sound so, I don't know, infectious. Teeming with throat germs. That might not be "good for business." I don't have a fever any more, and have moved on to fairly-uncomfortable-but-currently-tolerable chest congestion, but, the throat. The throat!

(Bitch, bitch, bitch.)

In other news, I've been enjoying my forced time at home. Earlier this week it was chilly and snowy, with 50 mph gusts of wind. (As if I needed more convincing reasons to stay in bed/on the couch.) I've completed almost all my Christmas shopping online, napped with fat cats, and last night I felt good enough to work on my parents' Christmas painting. I've eaten soup and consumed a lot of diet orange juice, echinacea tea, and a bewildering amount of blue Powerade. Cool Blue.

I love beverages.

Yes, I do.

(But if I see one more mug of echinacea I might hurl. HURL.)

I think the most enjoyable part of the Throat Grossness Quarantine 2006 has been being able to just be in our house during the day and enjoy it. I hate that I'm rarely here when it's light outside, and barely ever here when it's quiet. The weekends are busy, so I don't notice my surroundings. And I love my job, but I often dream about the quietness of the house's rooms, the silent sunlight squares moving slowly across the floor, how the walls stoically wait. I crave quiet house time. I daydream about sitting at the kitchen table mid-afternoon, listening to our windchimes. I wonder how the hours pass at home, how the quiet sounds, if our lamps and books and picture frames are the same or if their presence becomes something bigger, something louder. This week I've had a few afternoons where I could actually witness those window light boxes making their daily journey, where I could listen to wind and passing cars and feel a satisfaction in knowing they would pass me by, that I would remain still. I watched the light change on the bedroom walls, from gray to green to yellow to orange green to brown to pink to gray again.

Everything hummed.

black sheep