Life In The Oyster

I am ILL.  Sunday night, my throat started itching and making coughing sounds, and by Monday morning, I was miserable.  Achy and lightheaded and coughy and gross.  My first thought was Strep, since I work with kids and both myself and my sister have been exposed to it in the last couple weeks, so I scheduled a throat culture, just to be on the safe side.

I don't have strep.  I was almost hoping I did, because the other option is a yucky cold.  (This is how sick I am.  I said yucky).   When I am sick, my number one fix is sleep.  So Monday was spent sleeping.  I also don't feel like eating when my throat is like this, so I drank a couple fruit smoothies to keep my sleep well-fueled.

By midnight, I was running a fever, which means even if I feel up to it, there's no going to work for me.  I didn't feel up to it though and spent more time sleeping.  I'm also plowing through my stack of library books in a way I haven't since highschool.  My current nonfiction reading, has been replaced by three works of (young adult) fiction, so far.

First, Girl, Stolen, April Henry.  A blind girl gets accidentally kidnapped while her stepmother's car is being stolen.  Also, blind girl has pneumonia.   It's not a pile of terrible things happening though, it's realistic, I think. Even the ending isn't quite as immediately happy as I was hoping.  (Obviously, blind girl regaining her sight and marrying prince charming and then riding off into the sunset is a little farfetched.)

Second, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George.  I like fairy tales.  I have several volumes, including the Blue Fairy Book, and I'm aghast and appalled when I learn my friends don't know who Rose Red is.  This book is a retelling of the story East of the Sun, West of the Moon.  It has Isbjørn, trolls, centaurs, and spinning.  Is there really a better recipe for a book?

This evening, I finished Light Years, by Tammar Stein.  This one was a tearjerker.  I don't normally cry in books, but due to my compromised state, I'll allow it.  Maya is from Israel.  She comes to my own lovely state, Virginia, to study, escape and find peace.  I wasn't sure this book was going to be good sick day reading, but Ms. Stein opens the story with a detailed, accurate description of the humidity here.   I immediately felt right at home, and since I spent the last part of the book shivering under several blankets, it was a welcome reminder of warmer days.

This being said, I'm almost out of books because during my last visit to the library, I managed to be slightly realistic about the amount of books I read in a week.  Unfortunately, this is not a normal week, and now I am down to my last three books and I'm not sure I want to read them.

So I stare at this for 15 minutes, utterly defeated, since the three books I have left are all downstairs anyway.