whimsical in the brainpan, and apologies for rusty segues

I'm done with my first quarter! Done done done done done! Now I can lie down with my almost-certainly-not-Swine flu and see how long I can hold out without taking an aspirin. I've had a fever since this morning, and possibly since last night, but I didn't really understand what was going on until, right after my philosophy exam, I started shivering uncontrollably despite feeling uncomfortably warm. Up to that point, I'd faintly registered that my joints and throat were stiff and tingly-feeling and hard to shift, that my thinking was fuzzier and my movements more clumsy than they should be, but my reaction was mostly mild annoyance and puzzlement. Sometimes, especially if I'm preoccupied, I get strangely dissociated from my body (that's a pretty Cartesian statement right there). It doesn't quite click that the peculiar sensation that keeps distracting me is hunger, or pain, or physical exhaustion, or a fever. It's weird. Funny and scary both. I'm not a self-punishing person at all, and if I'm fully inhabiting my flesh (again, I need to think of a better way to phrase this) I'll eat if I feel hungry and sleep if I'm tired and pull back from sources of pain and not push myself to work if I'm shaking and seeing things that probably aren't there. It's more that I only vaguely understand that I feel uncomfortable, and can't pinpoint the source or figure out what to do except ignore it, push ahead, and hope it goes away.

I've been having a sick autumn, I think. Maybe it's this school, students bringing in their germs from all over the country, all over the world. Maybe it's just bad luck.


R., the librarian's daughter, turned twelve yesterday. I only learned about it that morning, so I gave her a hastily scribbled-on postcard which displays Victorian-style illustrations of various human eye colors and ascribes to them personality traits, like irises are mood rings or something. (Green= mercurial, gray= mischievous, black= commanding, blue= wise, and so on.) There was a bag of microwave popcorn under my bed. R. likes popcorn. I can take it or leave it. I threw that in, too.

BK-- the librarian-- says that R.'s been expressing a desire for her eyes to turn violet. (They're dark brown/black presently-- she's of Asian descent.) Maybe she can get colored contact lenses someday, but I always think it's a bit sad when girls start feeling insecure about the way they look. Wishing to be taller, thinner, shorter, to have bigger or smaller chests, butts, hips; to have a "better" hair or eye color. (Usually "better" ends up meaning "WASPier." )

In R.'s case, though, I suspect it might be less the creeping, insidious influence of mass-media brainwashing that's made her want different eyes, and more that she's recently read Tamora Pierce's Lioness Quartet and wants to be like Alanna.

(And hey, in most ways that's vastly preferable. Maybe she'll learn to fence.)

(I like that kid.)