Ill attempts

I stayed home yesterday because I was not feeling my usual perky, happy, healthy self. The previous day, I got home with a horrendous headache and a fever that kept coming and going, leaving me sweaty and shivery in parts (did the curate and his egg figure recently?) and either dizzy or not sure whether my feet still existed. So I was bundled into bed and lectured steadily at intervals through the day, which I listened to patiently and smilingly, knowing that I would do what I wanted to do, nonetheless. But after a rather wobbly trip to the grocery store and an even more wobbly navigation back home, I decided to sit down and be quiet for a while. Which, as always, inevitably, made me think….

I had tried everything, but nothing worked. Over the past week or so, I have gone progressively off shoes, off food, even cheese, and, more important and dire, off chocolate. That last has been bothering my friend Stinky most of all – he knows how much chocolate means to me and how much going off it signifies. So since I mentioned to him my current aversion to the sweet brown stuff, he has been looking at me worriedly over messenger and asking me probingly about my dietary inclinations. I still have not re-found the passion I normally have for the stuff, and until I do, Stinky will continue to be concerned, I bet.

But whenever I feel not quite the thing, I tend to go off something that would otherwise be a habit. Like food. For me, eating is usually a matter of joy, with creating the food even more so. I may not shovel in the grub, but I love the occasional nibbles I take of the various bits and pieces that are in the house, from cold, fresh iceberg lettuce in the vegetable tray to crisp, sweet oatmeal cookies in the jar on the counter. For the past few days, the idea of putting anything beyond regular mealtime food into my mouth has been vaguely repellent. And the taste…ew! Everything, from the dangerously sharp mustard I sweet-talk a five-star hotel restaurant into giving me, to the cement-violet blackcurrent ice cream in the freezer has made me shudder with a certain disgust, while tasting amazingly unlike its normal delicious self.

And then there is the shoe thing. I love shoes, as anyone reading this blog would know. But for a while now I have not responded to anything vaguely resembling footwear, thus worrying everyone from my father to my friends, all of whom know my need to acquire – or at least gaze longingly at – heels with the general configuration of nicely sharpened pencils, straps with the fragility of Murano glass and colours with all the hues of a Zandra Rhodes hairdo. The last time I went to the mall with a friend, I found stuff for her and turned up my little snub nose at the mere suggestion of a scarlet stiletto sandal, which had her crinkling her brow and suggesting that perhaps I need a month at a spa or a new interest in life, like wicked lingerie or a man with a brand new Mercedes that I could drive.

Nothing works right now. So maybe I need to just go forth homewards and sleep it off. There is life after a virus leaves. And there will be shoes, too. And chocolate.