Quarantine

On day five of being housebound due to a rather debilitating bout of tonsillitis, and what feels like an ear infection but isn't.

Today I am finally starting to feel better, meaning that I don't have a fever and my entire body doesn't ache. Also, I can eat solid food! I feel like I have a boring, run-of-the-mill cold instead of the chronic illness that has plagued me since I was an infant (and, yet, my doctor still thinks it unnecessary to remove my tonsils since it's a procedure that "isn't really done anymore" despite the fact that this my fourth case of tonsillitis since June and has so far accounted for 20 missed days of work in less than a year).

And so in feeling better but still being required to stay home and rest, I am getting bored.

I'm reminded of the times in high school when I was sick enough to miss school for weeks on end.

1. I had pneumonia in grade nine, when I was fourteen. I had fevers peaking at 104 degrees Celsius and half the time I couldn't breathe, my lungs were so full of fluid. Thank God for advancements in antibiotics. I missed nearly a month of school, and spent day after day lying on the couch watching re-runs of Happy Days on the Christian network (seriously, it was the only alternative to day-time talk shows and soaps) and coughing up phlegm into a bucket conveniently placed within spitting distance.

2. When I was sixteen, in the eleventh grade, I had mono. At the time, I was kissing L___ B_____, but of course that's not the only way mono can be transmitted. Sure, saliva has to be involved, meaning you can get it off a shared pop bottle or a straw or a fork, or even a lipstick tester in the drug store. Technically I was sick for two months, but only missed school for about two and a half weeks. Prior to the full-blown illness I was getting sick very gradually, the most noticeable sign being the swelling of my face, particularly around the eyes. Then for days, I became more and more tired and finally on one spring weekend I was so sick my mom took me to a walk-in clinic where they tried to diagnose me unsuccessfully. A few days later we went to my family doctor, and he did a blood test that confirmed I had mono. And then followed my being unable to eat anything but Ensure and Boost health shakes, since it was impossible to swallow food given the size of my tonsils. The fatigue was the worst, I think. I slept maybe 16 hours a day, and spent the rest of the time lying in bed watching movies and whatever happened to be on television. Then if I had to go to the bathroom the sheer energy required to move myself from the bed, out of the room, and down the hall, ensured that I would be so exhausted that once I got back to the bed I fell asleep instantly and slept soundly for six hours.

This particular bout on tonsillitis is the worst I have felt since having mono almost exactly ten years ago.

But, now that I am finally beginning to feel better, I am becoming antsy. It might not be so bad if S. were home, but he isn't a sickie and so gets to go to work. I would go to work but I am strictly not to return to work, and get as much rest as possible, until I go back to the doctor tomorrow for a follow-up.

With my increasing restlessness, I suddenly I feel like James Stewart in Rear Window. The view from my living room window even looks right onto the backyards of a row of townhouses, although I am pretty sure that every one of the residents is mightily boring.

I'd like to be Grace Kelly a bit more than I want to be Jimmy Stewart.

It occurred to me that both of the aforementioned major illnesses, and the one I'm experiencing now, have all happened in the spring or, at least, the very late winter / almost-spring. Despite the bit of snow that we had recently, it still feels like there's a touch of spring in the air. So I've had my head filled with images of lilies of the valley and floaty dresses.

The dress is from the Donna Karan Spring 2001 collection.
Yes, sometimes I do follow and enjoy current fashion. I blame
this particular obsession with a dress on my mother putting the
March issue of In Style in my tonsillitis care package. So many pretties!

This spring-like feeling makes me want to be, I don't know, creative or something. Which is when I came up with the idea to do a little project, a thing called a moodboard which we used to make back in elementary school and which I've seen turning up in friends' art blogs and even in an issue of Flare magazine at my doctor's office. For the unfamiliar, it's almost like a collage, except you can use objects like books or jewellery or photographs, even clothing, as well as images cut from newspapers or magazines. I used to love making collages as a kid and later, I even loved to make them as a teenager. I wish I had a photo of the collage that used to decorate the wall behind my bed, almost like a giant headboard of creativity. I created and added to it for about five years.

Anyways, because of this feeling in the air today, I wanted to try and capture this state of mind I was in, and so I came up with this.

Included in this 3D collage are some favourite pieces of pretty, inexpensive jewellery and whispy silk scarves. The heart-shaped photo in the middle is of myself when I was eleven years old, and my two best friends from elementary school. The picture was taken at Girl Guide camp; we went camping every spring. I used to keep the picture in a heart-shaped frame which broke long ago; as for the girls in the picture, we grew apart years ago and are now mere Facebook friends. The plastic bow barrettes are from when I was a little girl. The vase is Wedgwood and it was given to me by S.'s mother; it had belonged to S.'s grandfather. As for the books, I first enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway in the spring. The flowered notebook is an old journal, but the cover is so pretty. It is filled mostly with memories from spring 2003. I am currently reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, set during summer 1950, and I am absolutely loving it. The flowered dress is a perennial favourite, as are the turquoise hat and sunglasses (they're actually Prada, legitimately. I nabbed them from the lost and found at work, years ago. Totally within my rights, too. They had been languishing in that box for months). I bought the high-heeled shoes last summer for my cousin's wedding, and they are the most beautiful shoes I've owned in my entire life. Oh, and that idyllic lake scene is a still from the film Barry Lyndon. It's in a Stanley Kubrick book that I gave S. for Christmas one year.

I've been feeling rather creative lately, which isn't surprising since I've been feeling less depressed lately. Or at least I've had a lot of episodes of mixed mood, but no definite hardcore sadness. Last week I completed a short story to submit to the Toronto Star short story contest, and it felt really good to write something that I felt (and S. agreed with me wholeheartedly) was very solid and clever, and could conceivably be one of the winning stories.

Also, I've been delving into erotic fiction. S. has always claimed I'd have a talent for it, and so he's proving himself to be correct. Maybe someday I can publish and be Canada's very own Anais Nin. Although I feel somehow that the time for erotica has passed. Then again, people said that about burlesque, and it's experiencing an unprecedented revival.

Maybe an erotic moodboard (or "mood bed" since the one I created today was done on my bed) is next on my agenda. Of course I'll probably be fully recovered soon and then my biggest problems will be 1. work and 2. keeping S. from humping me, as we haven't had sex in over a week, goddamnit.