Word Raccoon told me last night she was not getting sick. Just because her throat hurt and she was feeling cranky meant nothing.

I made her do a salt water rinse, after which she assured me she was perfectly fine, see? She opened her mouth wide.

I remained dubious.

She stayed up too late regaling herself with chaotic SNL videos (Domingo!), and then the algorithm offered dance clips. She said “try me,” and YouTube obliged. We enjoyed Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, some Dad hiphop, the Cupid Shuffle (which we have done many times during band breaks), amateur shuffle dancing, skate dancing, and pretty much every dance you can imagine until YouTube seemed to say, “And now we return you to your usual, burned out fare.” I said fine but turned the phone off instead, and WR passed out from too many sweets from her stocking.

These things typically happen when WR (my inner writing sidekick; I keep forgetting not everyone has met her yet) gets sick:

Symptom number one: Time means nothing. Sleep? What’s that? Around 5 this morning she assured me she was awake for no good reason and begged for a cold Coke Zero, which I gave her. She promptly fell asleep.

Symptom number two: Caffeine defiance. She can drink gallons of it when she’s sick and it’s like her body refuses to acknowledge it, though she also doesn’t get sleepy unless it’s time for the alarm. See above re: doesn’t get sleepy.

She was in and out all night. But the minute the alarm was about to go off, she bolted upright, turned it off, and set another for half an hour later.

When it went off,  I turned it off and she woke at 8 on her own, when I insisted she get up and have breakfast.

“I know it’s gray and rainy. I know you don’t feel well, but writing is not a bad cocoon for days like this.”

Our gorl is solar powered. Today she’ll have to content herself with being sweets powered.

Symptom number three I can’t verify, because her hair is already straight from yesterday’s blow dry. But for the record: when she’s sick and her hair is curly, it goes straight. I can’t explain it. The curls retreat.

Symptom number four: Pain migration. While my joints were hurting yesterday, today they feel fine. For some reason it’s like her body pulls the pain from everywhere else and concentrates it on the immediate threat. Today, that would be her throat.

While this isn’t a symptom, at breakfast WR kept doing accents. The “red truck hauling a Christmas tree” guy? Her voice was just deep enough from the sore throat to pull off a pretty convincing impression.

She does love an accent moment, but I had to stop her today.

I’m allowing her to listen to Christmas music right now, but I’ve warned her she’s finished come January 1. She’s pretending she will comply.

In part I’m writing this sloppy copy to see what she might be up to managing today. Will she wait quietly at my side while I work on the novel? (I tried to leave Book Goblin in the room, but she insisted on bringing her. Now there’s a sweet family here on the sun porch, three children and presumably a mother, doing a puzzle and I’m trying to shield BG from view. It’s exactly the sort of stuffed creature that would appeal to children. If it were a normal stuffie, I wouldn’t care. But this one is special. And not inexpensive.)

Would efforts be better served submitting poetry?

I have supplied WR with three kinds of beverages: hot tea, cold Coke Zero, and room temperature water. So far she’s choosing the tea, though she has officially entered the “I can’t taste anything except sweets” phase, which I am rightly skeptical of.

Today, her Little Debbie tree (which she forgot to eat yesterday) is in plain sight and she may have it whenever she wants. Of course now she doesn’t want it. Not yet. But let one of those kids spot it and she’ll hiss like a raccoon at a campground.

I would give it to anyone who asked, if she weren’t sick. But we are not sharing germs.

I think today needs to be low stakes on the writing front.

I won’t set an intention beyond this:
Let’s touch writing and see if it touches us back.

Fair enough?