5am

I'm up. I'm up because over the past three days there has been no Time To Get Up, Time To Go To Bed. I have a cold, people, a miserable, energy-sucking cold that has made the last three days a blur of unconsciousness broken by dragging my ass from the house to see shows I've been assigned to review, sitting quietly and trying not to disturb the show with the Redi-Whip sound of me bowing my nose.

This is the morning of Day Four, and the battle is being won; the antibodies are capturing that hill and celebrations are in preparation. The turning point in the battle came when my sinuses hurt so much that I had to take ibuprofen and put an ice pack on my face. The troops in the trenches took a lot of casualties for that one.

Now, my face has become a faucet.

I have a pile of my great-grandmother's fine, cotton hankies to blow my nose, as Kleenex (well, OK, toilet paper in my case)  just rips the crap out of skin. The cats love that I have spent the last three days on a couch with a comforter, and have sprawled luxuriously across me in an ecstasy of purring and finger-licking. For me, with chills and body aches, no hot water bottle could be better. Urban Symbiosis, baby; it's where it's at.

And part of me loves the permission sickness gives to just let it all go: duty (except for play assignments), hygiene, activity, consciousness. I don't like being sick at all, but I love the complete absence of guilt at abdicating most responsibility.

This evening at 7pm I am hosting a potluck for the theater-blog writers. I'm banking that 14 hours from now I'll be closer to human, farther from something from SciFi that overwhelms its prey with goo.

Don't let me sneeze all over the veggie shepherd's pie.