Back to work

After having the day off sick yesterday, today I made the valiant sacrifice of going into work.

First of all I had to get out of bed. This required a few stops for coughing fits, but done.

Next, I had to get showered. Luckily the cleaning happened while I was leaning against the side of the shower wall coughing. There was soap involved somewhere.

Then I dried myself off, something that being doubled over coughing actually contributed helpfully to, and then I had to get dressed.

I performed that while sitting on the bed and lifting one limb and then one cheek at a time.

By the time I got to the couch I felt certain that I'd earned a medal, but it turns out all I earned was a ride to work.

Coffee helped. Morning tea helped more. I made it through the day.

And then on the ride home it started. The tickle that you get which means you have to cough loudly and inappropriately. The sort of cough that you really don't want to get on public transport.

Especially not when the double seat you scored on the bus was immediately filled by a little old lady. A little old lady who looked first alarmed and then horrified when I exploded into fits of suppressed coughing.

The problem is that no matter what you do, you can't stop a cough forever. You may twist into paroxysms of suppression until your face is bright red and your eyes are streaming tears, but that sucker is still there. Waiting.

And the longer you try not to cough, the more you have to, and the more you have to, the less relief you get when you finally succumb, and the less relief you get the quicker you need to again.

Until finally you get off the bus and all urges to cough go away. But they're waiting. They know I've got an Orbiter to catch tomorrow, and they're lining up right now.

Insult to injury

In order to take my mind off the horrendous pain swamp that my throat and chest have become, I spent a nice quarter hour today googling my books.

This is an excellent pastime, and I highly recommend everyone immediately undertakes it. Found, near water and Skeletal BTW.

While happily strolling around the lanes of the internet I came across a curious note that I hadn't seen before. It went something like this:

Want to download Found near water. Does anyone know where I could find it?

Well. I'm quite excited. First of all, someone has heard of my book. Second of all, they're wanting to read it enough to put in a little bit of effort. Not the effort of spending money and all, but some effort.

I don't really mind. I grew up taking books out of the library for exactly nada, so if someone wants to spend the same discovering my work they're welcome. After all, I grew up to be a person who quite happily buys books by her favourite authors as soon as they release them. I can only presume the freeloader of today will be the fan of tomorrow.

My not really minding came to a halt at the next comment however.

Too long and a bit boring.

WTF??? My book??? The short and interesting one???

How rude! I take back everything about not minding the poverty stricken freeloaders, and replace it immediately with hate and lawsuits.

Copyright infringement is one thing, tasteless reviews are quite another.

Breakfast

We went out for a cooked breakfast this morning. Some family reason, I don't really know because I wasn't concentrating. I was too busy trying not to cough up phlegm in the middle of a restaurant.

To show it was a really bad idea to go out to breakfast the rain absolutely poured down. This is something Christchurch rain seldom gets itself worked up enough to do. When it does go to the trouble, you should respect it and stay indoors. Instead, we drove to the Casino.

Perhaps I should insert here that if you go out for a meal that involves my darling's mother it will be at the Casino. This is the only place in Christchurch that she knows how to get to, and get to she does, quite often.

The breakfast is a buffet, and while others at the table started off with a quite reasonable spread of yoghurt and fruit, I headed straight for the eggs and bacon.

Eggs Benedict, sausages, bacon, pancakes. My meal was almost complete. And then I lifted the stainless steel lid on the hash browns to reveal... nothing.

Two trays of bacon there were. Two trays of eggs. One tray of sausages, but that's about right. One double tray of pancakes. And what size was the tray set aside for the hash browns? One tray. ONE TRAY.

I mean, I ask you. If you had the choice of making sure there were hash browns available, or holding aside extra trays for mushrooms, and tomatoes, and baked beans, what would you do?

Exactly. But no. The buffet adjudicators have decided in their wisdom that the diners of Christchurch would rather have variety than an ample supply of the necessities.

This created a slight controversy when the next load of hash browns were served up, and I cut the line to select a plateful, leaving almost none behind for the people still waiting in line.

Not my fault, queuing breakfast people. Get over it.