(1) I am doing much better. I still have occasional coughing fits (and in fact I pulled a muscle with one this morning), but I'm almost all better. I feel better than I've felt in a couple months.

(2) plumtreeblossom has absolutely zero voice and can barely whisper, thanks to so much coughing for so long, and she has a bad sore throat (which I had for a couple days and got over), but other than that she is also doing much better. She's got her energy and her appetite back, the coughing is almost gone, and the fever's been gone for a few days. Yay! It's so good to see her up and about and energetic again!

(3) woodwardiocom has a great post about the many layers of fiction in The Big Broadcast, the show plumtreeblossom and I worked on which had such a spectacular run. I hadn't really thought about it until reading his post, but I think those onion-like layers of fiction within fiction are part of why the whole show felt so rich and satisfying. The Thousand Nights and a Night and parts of the Canterbury Tales have similarly deep nesting of stories, and I think there's something about that particular device that's especially good at sucking you in.

Wow, it’s been an intense few days. The spectacular show I’ve been involved with had performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, and Saturday afternoon. It was just spectacular — easily the most ambitious show I’ve ever been involved with. And it was huge amounts of fun.

Except for a day’s work on Friday — during which I passed out during a coughing fit and fell off my chair —, all my other time was spent with my poor sick plumtreeblossom. She says she was sicker than she’d ever been before in her adult life, and I can believe it. She’d have periods of not really being lucid, although she’d also have periods of being completely conscious of all the misery she was in. And she felt utterly terrible about having to miss the performances. (Actually, I was ill enough that if she’d been completely well, I’d have at least considered backing out of the performances because my cough was so bad. But I managed, and since all the coughing was away from the mikes I don’t think it distracted the audience too much.) On top of all this, she heard of an unexpected and tragic death in the family (her niece’s mother, who was still very much a part of her niece’s and her brother’s lives, died at 37 due to an undiagnosed congenital heart defect), so she had that to deal with too. Poor my honeywuzzle.

This was the first time I’d ever done Foley (sound effects), and it was a huge amount of fun. In fact, it was the first time for all four of us out on stage, but plumtreeblossom (Foley captain) had done such a fabulous job of training us and forging us into a team, and Sarah (Foley coordinator) did such a good job of figuring out how to adapt to plumtreeblossom’s absence on-stage, that it all flowed really smoothly.

I wish I’d been able to stay for strike and the cast party, but I wasn’t really feeling well enough for the labour (wouldn’t have wanted a repeat of my fainting experience earlier that day while I was carrying a heavy expensive speaker!) or for a late night of debauchery, and I needed to go see plumtreeblossom, who’d been a little concerned about being alone through the day’s two performances.

I can’t say enough about how wonderful the experience of being in that show was, and how proud I am of the entire group and how lucky I am to be able to do community theater and live radio drama with such a wonderful, talented bunch of people.

As far as our health, plumtreeblossom and I both seem to have turned a corner. Friday evening all my free thoughts were devoted to figuring out how I could get medical attention quickly after the show was over, and whether plumtreeblossom needed to go back to the ER. But Friday night something seemed to shift, and Saturday morning I was feeling not well, but much, much better. And plumtreeblossom was having a rough time on Saturday when she woke up, but after she got some calories in her she was doing a lot better than she’d been in a while. We were actually hopeful for a while that she might make it to the theater to watch the last performance, but she didn’t get better enough for that. But she was definitely better, and today she’s better still. So we’re both still coughing, aching, and exhausted, but I’m pretty sure we’re both over the worst of it and on the road to recovery.

In sickness and in health

But lately, in more sickness than we’d either like.

So a couple months ago (after everybody else in my office had already had it), I got the flu. (Probably the Hamthrax, since it was too early for seasonal flu.) I had it especially bad for a week or so. plumtreeblossom picked it up from me but she got a very very mild version — she was basically inconvenienced for a couple days, but nothing beyond that.

As tends to be the case whenever either of us gets any kind of respiratory infection, we ended up with long lingering coughs. They’ve lasted much longer than normal, though — ordinarily my cough would be dry and occasional by now, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better (or worse) over the last three weeks. This stage, though, has hit plumtreeblossom much harder than me all along, and a couple days ago she took a serious turn for the worse.

( plumtreeblossom’s trip to the ER, and some performance stuff. )

I am now on the train on my way briefly back to Quincy to feed and water Chickenfinger and clean her litterbox, and pick up clean clothes (which I will probably have to first cause to be clean). Then back to the theater for opening night. I can’t wait, but I sure wish plumtreeblossom could be with us in person as well as in spirit.

As always, plumtreeblossom, I love you.

PS — Yes, I know I need to see a doctor too. Slightly complicated because I’ll be seeing a new doctor and there’s insurance stuff I have to do first. I’d hoped to squeeze that in yesterday or today, but haven’t managed, and plumtreeblossom’s needs are a lot more urgent than mine.

➀ Today, for the first time since my cough developed, I woke up without any coughing fits! Oh, I’ve had the occasional cough this morning, but basically I’ve been fine. This is a red-letter day!

➁ I had an odd dream this morning. I had just moved into a little house by a canal in an industrial district with a bunch of other little houses nearby. ( The dream. )

(1) I forgot to mention in my post about the weekend that Saturday morning plumtreeblossom and I got together with my old college friend beeiger her son projectmothra, and her girlfriend lediva for early brunch at Johnny D’s, and we had a delightful time.

(2) I’ve switched my phone service over to a new carrier, and I can send and receive voice calls and send text messages, but so far I haven’t been able to receive text messages. Perhaps the SMS routing system is independent from the voice-call routing system and that part of the switch hasn’t happened yet, but in any case, for now, don’t assume I can get your text messages. My phone number hasn’t changed.

(3) I have some health news (on balance good, but leaving me pretty dissatisfied with the state of my health care) which I will eventually post about. Anyway, the tingling, itching, and occasional pain in my hands and feet is gone now. :-)

(4) A lovely coda to my extended weekend was having cathijosephine and m_c_t ask if I wanted to meet them for a trip to the beach so they could fly their kites. I joined them, had a great time watching them fly kites and hanging out, and was introduced to a wonderful beach just a short walk from the T, which I look forward to taking plumtreeblossom to soon. (We had a kind of stressful experience towards the end of the evening, after it had gotten dark, when after a long walk across he beach m_c_t discovered he didn’t have his phone. The three of us spread out and retraced the path he and I had been walking, constantly calling the phone so it would be ringing, and we did find it. That was a huge relief!)

(5) And then on the way home I had an extra-thick double-malted frappe for dinner (because the places that served real food had just closed, but I’m not complaining!).

I have lots of wonderful weekends, but I just had an especially wonderful one.

It started on Friday night, when warlord_mit and surrealestate had a wine tasting (with several selections from warlord_mit’s ample cellar) followed by a Chicago singalong. That was just about the most fun event I’ve been to since, well, probably the last party at their place. :-) plumtreeblossom and I had a great time.

On Saturday [EDIT: after a yummy breakfast of catching up with beetiger, her son projectmothra, and lediva at Johnny D’s], we needed to pick up new veterinary supplies for her cat Rowley from Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in JP, and since I really miss Jamaica Pond and plumtreeblossom has taken up long walks, I suggested that we combine pleasure and business and take a walk around Jamaica Pond first. Which we did, and we had a lovely and relaxing time and got to see lots of dogs and lots of scenery. (I did, however, break the screen on my old small camera while I was carrying it, though. Good think I have the awesome new one, and a camera on my cell phone.) Nice to enjoy the outdoors, now that Massachusetts has finally decided it’s summer after a couple months of Novembers.

After that, we went to Angell and picked up Rowley’s supplies and window-shopped for quite a while in their adoption center. Had a wonderful time visiting with all the animals! Then we went home to our respective houses.

Sunday was a workday at theatreatfirst, so I got to see plumtreeblossom again at that, as well as lots of other wonderful Firsties. It let out very early, so we had an early dinner together outdoors in Davis Square before going to her place to take care of Rowley.

( Don’t read if needles or related things upset you. )

And today I went in to town to meet plumtreeblossom for the Indian lunch buffet at Shalimar of India in Central Square. Yummy food and a nice little daytime mini-date.

Oh, and today was a good day to take off from work, apparently. I most often take the Green Line down Huntington Ave, and I would have been significantly delayed. That was a couple blocks from my building at work. I’m really glad nobody was hurt!

[So I composed this last night and was just about to post it, and a slip of the thumb on the trackpad wiped most of it out. Retyping and posting now, but let’s pretend I posted this last night.]

First the good:

Had a fabulous day with plumtreeblossom, surrealestate', and some other folks. Met plumtreeblossom at The Burren for a yummy brunch, then browsed in a housewares store before meeting surrealestate and some other Firsties back at The Burren for a performance of All in the Timing, a collection of short plays that Theatre@First had done a few years ago. It was a lot of fun. When Theatre@First had done it, each one-act play had had a different cast, but this group did it with mostly the same actors on all six plays — and some of them were real feats of memorization. It was a lot of fun and a great performance.

Afterwards, plumtreeblossom and I went back to surrealestate’s for a game of Scrabble and a couple of games of Chez Geek, and had a great time. On our way back to plumtreeblossom’s she and I got really yummy Thai food at Tip Top Thai near surrealestate’s. And it’s so nice out that she and I just [Sunday night] had our regular nightcap and wonderful meandering conversation (and her goodnight cigarette) out on her balcony.

A very good day.

Now the bad:

On Friday night, I coughed. Just once, and not a very big cough. Barely clearing my throat. But it hurt my back really badly, and it still hurts (although it’s somewhat better now).

On Saturday evening, as I was finally getting around to the morning shower I hadn’t managed all day because my back hurt too much to stand for that long I reached for the bathroom doorknob. And felt a sharp pain in my wrist, along with a weird shifting sensation. The sharp pain went away pretty quickly, and I thought I was fine until I open the shower curtain and it was back again. And I still have it, whenever I do the wrong thing. Putting on my coat or buttoning or unbuttoning buttons is always the wrong thing. Taking my cell phone out of my pocket or steadying myself on a wall (did I mention that my back is still in a lot of pain?) is sometimes the wrong thing. Conveniently, typing is never the wrong thing, and I had no problem holding my cards in that hand at surrealestate’s.

And as we were getting ready to leave surrealestate’s last night, I bent over to tie my shoe, and hurt my back in a completely different place. Fortunately that only lasted about 20min and seems to have gone away completely by now, but still!

This is Not Okay. I’m going to take this body back for a refund.

(I have a vague notion that this joint stuff might be related to side effects from a new drug my doctor put me on — I’ve got some other, less worrisome side effects that I’m pretty sure are from it — and I’ll be talking to him as soon as possible.)

The good news: Thanks both to time and to the meds plumtreeblossom brought over, I’m doing much better. If you ignore the cough, I’m pretty much well. I went out of the house today. There’s this bright yellow thing in the sky that makes you warm. It was a little weird.

But the bad news is very bad. My housemates have this (darxus started feeling bad last night; cathijosephine realized she was sick early this evening). And so does my poor honeywuzzle. She seemed fine this morning, but by this evening (after I dropped her off in Davis) she was really sick.

I hope all of them get better very quickly, and I feel really really guilty. :-(

I’m not dead, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t be an improvement. As you know if you read plumtreeblossom’s journal, I’ve had a nasty flu.

Wednesday night I started feeling icky, and when I went to bed (uncharacteristically early) I texted work to say I wouldn’t be in. Thursday I basically spent all day in bed, spending a few minutes on the computer to say a few things to folks at work (although reading was an effort), and spending a couple hours in hot bath — that long mainly because that’s how long it took me to muster the energy to get out — and except for the occasional ordeal getting downstairs to pee or get something from the fridge (despite my nausea) I spent all day sleeping.

My darling plumtreeblossom came over and brought me juice and yogurt and similar things to fend off starvation and dehydration, and called cathijosephine, so she checked in on my and brought me a hot toddy full of ginger before going to bed. I’m so lucky to have people who take care of me.

Friday I again stayed home and spent most of the day in bed, but I was able to focus for about half a movie, and I think my fever broke.

Today, I’m over the fever and joint-ache parts and able to stay mostly conscious, but my nasty cough has started, worse than it usually is. When I start coughing I need to sit down, because if it goes on for very long, I won’t be able to keep my balance, and after the worst coughing fits I feel dizzy tingly all over. Good thing my limbs don’t ache any more, because my chest and belly muscles and throat are in a great deal of pain — the throat not being “sore throat” pain I think, but just injury from coughing. Bleh. Mare is coming over shortly, and is bringing me flu meds. (I’m embarrased to say I just discovered some unexpired cough syrup in the bathroom; if I’d realized I had that last night I might be in better shape.)

Anyway, sorry for whining!

Lovely weekend overall, although it had apparent (but not real) tragedy in it and a certain amount of plans gone slightly awry.

plumtreeblossom and I had dinner on Friday night at Mike’s (if I’m remembering correctly) and then wandered over to Hollywood Video to pick out a movie for the night. We ended up getting Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a Canadian comedy-thriller about an Odd Couple–like pair of cops from Toronto and Montréal who have to work together when a body is found right on the Québec-Ontario border. I didn’t remember much about it, but I had heard something about it on the radio and knew I had bookmarked it as something I was interested in seeing. It was pretty fun, despite not being a genre either of us watches much.

On Saturday we ended up at Kelly’s Diner for breakfast, and then plumtreeblossom had to go run an errand, and I went back to her place. When she returned (surprised to find me there — the plan had been for me to go on ahead to my place and she’d meet me there, but I was too lazy) we went back to Quincy.

We found what at first appeared to be a very disturbing situation at my house, which plumtreeblossom has written about, so I won’t go into too much detail. Short version: we thought darxus snake Dorothy had died, but after we warmed her up she was fine. Major scare! So glad she’s OK.

OK, I’m falling asleep, so I’m going to go ahead and post this even though I haven’t caught up to the present.

In other news, my hip is all better (and was by Thursday or Friday).