Cold

Me, not the apartment. The girl working in the florist shop downstairs has turned on the heat, and it's roasting in here, driving me nuts. Outside there's a thundershower. I've opened the hall window to let in fresh air and the slick, noisy whispers of a rainy day in the city.

This cold hit suddenly on my way out the door to work the library last night. I didn't have Kleenex or anything, had to stock my pockets with wads of toilet paper from the public washroom. I sneezed and sneezed. Denise had brought zucchini pancakes and Mat brought ginger-squash soup, but food didn't ease the burning in my nasal passages. On the way home I stocked up on echinacea. I'm taking that with Advil Cold and Sinus.

And a new thing: glucosamine tablets. Mom recommended it for arthritis. Mirtazapine, Pariet: with all these pills I feel positively geriatric, a walking chemistry experiment. Who cares if they're herbal or synthetic? But without them I have pain in my throat, hips, stomach and soul.

I went to bed at 11:30 and drifted off more quickly than expected, woke what seemed like hours later with a rhinal Niagara. A glance at the clock revealed I had slept half an hour. Then I couldn't get back to sleep: sneezing, oozing, choking, hurting. Around 2:30 I was ready to give up, then fell sound asleep until 7:30.

This wide-spectrum light behind my monitor really works: I hate the glare in my eyes, so I get up and do things instead of sitting here. This morning I made the worst muffins ever. Perhaps they could be patented as a new building material, but I haven't the paitence—dumped them in the compost pail.

Thanks primarily to Advil, Niagara has abated, but I'm enjoying misery too much to stop complaining.

Still I can't resist sharing this magnificent sunset. Danny and I spent most of the day last Thursday driving from cottage country to Goderich, where we stayed in a B&B. All along the way we had magnificent, dramatic skies and splashes of fall colour.

The sun was just going down as we passed Kincardine, so I drove down to the beach. And this is what we saw: fire in the distance, and a remarkable pearly lustre off Lake Huron. The wind was too chilly for us to stay more than five minutes, but it seemed like we had hit the magic moment.

The second photo was taken near the cottage, earlier in the week.