Smokey the Magnificent

Well, it seems I have once again caught the lurgy. I know, right? That’s what, the fourth plague this winter? It’ll be my livestock next.

Anyway, I stayed home this morning from Bible study to convalesce, but convalescing with the snortlepig is only half-relaxing. Take our most recent conversation, in which she climbed up onto the bed with the phone and shoved it in my face.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gran!”

ME [blearily]: Hello, Gran.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gwampfa!”

ME: Hello, Grandpa.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gussie Pussy!”

ME [resigned]: Hello, Gussie Pussy.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Nimbus Pussy!”

ME: Hello, Nimbus Pussy.

SNORTLEPIG [with a mischievous grin]: Say “church”!

ME: Church.

SNORTLEPIG [taken aback; shoves the phone into my mouth; menacingly:] Eat it.

She has also developed a habit of stealing my hanky and flinging it as far away as she can. This morning she flung it off the bed, and when I requested she retrieve it she giggled and hid under the blankets on her tummy, and then fell asleep for half an hour. When she woke up, the first thing she did was kick me in the spine, then said “I threw Mummy’s hanky!” in a pleased sort of way, then leaped on my chest and said “I smell TASTY-GREAT! A bit of tiny milks?”

Anyway, I’m fine really, thank you for asking. My eyes feel like they’re being poached in their sockets, but that could be because I spent yesterday reading all of Jane Eyre and most of Wikipedia’s paranormal section. In combination, these are not calming to the psyche. I’d forgotten how cracking Jane Eyre is, though; I hadn’t read it for years. It has, like, banter. Actual banter. Not RAF banter, which is the best banter there is, but genuine banter nonetheless. Where did Charlotte get it from, do you think? Also, the truth is out there, I am beginning to honestly suspect. Srsly. It kind of makes me want to become the President, but they probably wouldn’t tell me the juicy stuff even if I did. Pesks.

I was homeschooled, so naturally I never learned how to be popular. Luckily, the Government is here to step in for unfortunates like myself, with what can only be described as a wildlife special.

And people complain about being unmarried. If they only knew - you have to do your hair.

On Sunday I decided it was Friend Day and I would rank my friends according to their pleasingness on that day. By lunchtime Helpdesk Man was down to -8 points and the snortlepig was in the lead with 1. Then I decided to invite some Friends over for dinner and make a Friend Day cake, so I did (chocolate rum cake with caramel icing and “Happy Friend Day” piped on the top; also a pigeon, which I designated the official bird of Friend Day), and bullied my Friends into bringing cider and bacon to add to the festivities. (Not all of my Friends. Only two. I have more friends than that, but there wasn’t much chicken.) Strangely, Helpdesk Man ended up with the most points, but only after he found out he could win a chocolate pigeon. It was a nice day. The end.

Also, I made a cake. A different, nother cake. Here it am.

Also, I decided this week that I would not surf the internet at all. It was supposed to make me productive, but then the dishwasher broke and my psyche became paralysed with horror and languor and a general all-pervading sense of swimming in treacle, and the table got all covered with dishes so I couldn’t get out my sewing machine and make the cunning skirt for the pig that I was intending to whip out in an afternoon, and then the pig started saying things like “I’m SAAAD, I want to DIEEE” in full-on tragedy voice, so I decided Enough was Enough and went to town to buy some L-Tyrosine, and while I was there I went to the library and got out a bunch of books, so I have spent most of this week reading them. Which is probably an improvement on surfing the internet, at least. I got out a book about adoption and a very bitter memoir by a fat lady about being fat, and some others I haven’t read yet about Celtic Women in Myth and History and a woman who had a face transplant. Also the Usborne Book of Castles, but that was for the pig.I thought she should know about castles so when we go to Disneyland she will be groovy and au fait with Sleeping Beauty’s.

I took the L-Tyrosine a few hours ago, but I don’t feel any more zingy. Well, I made some muffins. They had rum in them, but I’m not convinced, even though Alison Holst doesn’t usually steer me wrong. Hopefully the aminos will kick in in a day or so and I can post photos of myself taking salsa classes atop a mountain at dawn.

Also, we are potty-training the pig. Mixed success. She just throomed on the couch…. for instance.

For many months now it has been my intention to donate my still-tepid corpse, when the time is right, to Medical Science. I assume Medical Science wants it; if not, into the bayou I go, wrapped in a Persian rug. Anyway, the thought of being probed by callous first-year medical students doesn’t really make my week, but until now I have borne up under the consoling reflection that when the time comes, I shall be serene about the matter.

But this morning, lying in bed with the snortlepig jumping repeatedly on my spleen*, I came up with a happy thought that makes me positively itch for death. I will be the BEST CADAVER EVER. Med students, twenty years down the line, will chuckle over me - they’ll probably nickname me something, like Grace Kelly or Miss World, doubtless - and recount ‘twixt a smile and a tear how I single-cold-handedly got them through a punishing internship and out into the world of chiropractic psychobotany.

How? Before Helpdesk Man drops me off in the in-tray, I have asked him to fill me up with charms. (If I sense impending death I’ll do it myself, swallowing a miniature silver poodle or ballerina every hour or so so they are evenly spaced throughout my digestive tract, and stuffing a few in my ears and so on for good measure.) I’ll be like a Christmas cake! Dissecting me will be not a duty, but a pleasure - and a spirit of friendly rivalry between my gurneymates will prevail as to who can collect the most charms. They’ll probably wear them pinned to their lab coats.

Or, I could do it with pennies. You know how when you hire a housecleaner, you hide pennies around the house and if she finds the whole dollar and returns it like a biddable wee thing, you hire her?** Same principle. Only, being a bit of a smegger, I might hide only 98 cents, so that the week before finals residents are sneaking in, frantically pawing through my brainial matter in Aspergic desperation to find the final tuppence.

So there you go. Even in death, I will be making the world a better place, one incision at a time. I look forward to it with great anticipation.

*No biggie. I have an auxiliary spleen.

**I have never done this thing.

Yay!!! Last week was pretty much a bust, life-wise. I was certifiably, unquestionably sick for half of it, and spent the rest of it gingerly creeping round the kitchen while sickness peeped out of cupboards and giggled menacingly. Plus I had to finish an article on the physiology of bonding, which was interesting but would have been more so if I weren’t running a fever and telling the snortlepig “No sweetie, you can’t have the milks right now, Mummy’s sick” while typing about the benefits of nursing for opioid release.

Anyway, the article is IN and the sickness is, I dare to hope, GONE, and it is a BRAND NEW WEEK (well, you know, Tuesday) and I feel abrim with possibilities. I feel like starting a swing class and designing the snortlepig an entire summer wardrobe and possibly becoming a midwife. Which is unfortunate, as what I really have to do is a week’s worth of laundry and article catchups. Still, though.

Last night I realised that the Ocampa, only having one child per couple, could not possibly sustain their species. Helpdesk Man and Flatmate Man both laughed at me for not figuring this out before, but it worried me all night. Kes, by rights, should not have been.

Also, this morning we were all chillin’ in bed and I said, apropos above-mentioned zest for life, “We need to make a plan!” and the snortlepig said “I make a plan to HIDE YOU!” and pulled the duvet over my face and covered my mouth with her hand. She is a tiny psycho. I like her.

…but would you let your daughter date one? Discuss. (This isn’t a racial metaphor, I mean actual Klingons. Nor do I mean chappies who live their lives from con to con and spend half their take-home pay on latex prosthetics, although that is a valid auxiliary question. Nor am I referring to a Worf-like human-raised Trill-dating prune-juice-drinking Klingon; I mean a full-blooded, gagh-swilling, painstik-using one.)

I just discovered this a few days ago. Stupendously awesome.

Also, I woke up fine and perky yesterday morning and within an hour had developed a hideous, bone-aching, chilling, nauseous, eyeball-stabby, headachey, hysterical flu. Not impressed. I am somewhat better today, but it doesn’t really matter; I already told my little sister on the phone what must be done with my remains and personal possessions.