My friend, Barb, referred to the weird lingering cold, maybe flu, maybe multiple colds that seems to be hitting a lot of people as “the Martian flu,” and I’ve decided it’s a great name. I want to mention that said friend lives 1400 miles away, in Arizona. Another friend who reports a similar phenomenon in his community in January, lives 2200 miles away, in Texas. And another friend who reported it in her area lives 2800 miles away, in North Carolina. I mention this because I’ve had a couple of conversations with other long distance acquaintances where I mention the illness running around my office, where they’ve said, “I’m glad I’m not in Seattle!”

The thing is that I’ve been sick nearly continuously since the end of December, and so have a lot of people I know. We’ll be really sick with a certain constellation of symptoms for a few days, start to get better for a few days. Then we’ll have a couple days where we don’t feel completely, 100% healthy, but definitely nearly well. And then a slightly different constellation of symptoms will hit is full bore, and the cycle will begin again.

So, when I was up all night with symptoms that you do not want me to describe Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I felt an awful lot like that bowl of flowers in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books: “Oh, no. Not again!”…

So I took a sick day Wednesday. A real one, rather than sleep in for half the day, then log in remotely and work from home for a few hours. It made me feel a bit frantic by Thursday morning, because I have big deadlines looming, but sleeping very nearly the entire day Wednesday, and then going to bed early have dinner, did leave me feeling as if I were recovering Thursday morning.

There were two tasks I had to get done before Friday which I can’t do through the remote portal for technical reasons, and literally no one else at the office who can do them. (The foolishness of that situation is a topic for another day.) So rather than take the bus, which involves standing out in the weather for variable amounts of time, I drove it, paid for parking, got the tasks done, then drove home, took a brief nap, worked from home for a few hours. Took a longer nap. Woke up to have dinner with my hubby, and worked for a few more hours.

There was a part of Thursday night when I felt infinitely worse than I had been, and the thought of food really turned my stomach. Michael mentioned that when he’d looked in on my while I was napping that I’d been covered in sweat. So I drank a glass of water, followed by a glass of juice, followed by a can of coconut water, and followed by another glass of water (yes, in fairly quick succession), and suddenly felt a whole lot better. I had been pushing the fluids on Wednesday, and trying to do so Thursday, but obviously not good enough.

So, when my boss called me Friday morning to see if I had time to help with a small emergency in another business unit, I was actually a teensie bit ahead, so I could help out and still get to everything else I needed to do. And throughout Friday, working from home, made a concerted effort to keep drinking water and juice, and I kept feeling better and better. So by the time I would need to hit the road if I were to attend Jared’s birthday meet-up, I felt pretty good. Michael was as miserable sick as I had been a couple days before, so he stayed home.

Now, while all of this was happening in our household, various friends were experiencing some symptoms of there own. My godson, Valentine, came down sick. Then his dad, Dehd, returned from a business trip and suddenly fell very ill, enough that a trip to the emergency room seem warranted. It was determined that he had caught a nasty virus, which was made much worse by the rigors of cross-continental air travel, and stress of other things going on. Meanwhile, Valentine’s mom was dealing with two sick people, a plumbing issue in the house. And by the way, their house is being overrun by contractors because of a kitchen remodel.

Another friend, Matt D, had been ignoring early symptoms of some bug, until midway through Saturday when he developed the Cough of Doom™. Yet another friend, Chuck, has been feeling rundown. Last I heard, he isn’t admitting to being sick, but had no energy Saturday to go anywhere.

And, of course, I woke up Saturday morning with a the Sinus Headache from Hell™. I did the water, juice, coconut water routine while waiting for the cold tablets to kick in. Then I ran the usual Saturday errands, before coming home to take a nap.

The reason I mention all of these story lines converging on Saturday is because, this being the third Saturday of the month, it is the night we have our monthly writer’s get-together, Writers’ Night. It is often hosted at our place, but this month, Sheryl and Shan were hosting down in Federal Way. So while I was glad that we didn’t need to clean our house to be suitable for company, I also didn’t want to miss Writers’ Night, especially when someone else is going to the trouble to host.

I woke up twice during my nap due to sneezing fits. I hadn’t been sneezing previously during this cycle of the illness. So the third time I woke up, I was still thinking perhaps I could go, until I had another sneezing fit and the more responsible corner of my brain pointed out that even if I took enough cold meds to feel comfortable going, it was rather rude of me to show up and infect all my friends.

Particularly when I was sitting in an intentionally darkened living room, a hot pack on my head for the headache, and unable to do anything more intellectually challenging than watch the latest My Little Pony episode off the TiVo.

The last time I checked in, almost everyone who is a usual attendee was either sick, nursing other sick people in their household, or were out of town for the holiday weekend. I urged Mark to show up, if for no other reason to help with the food (besides, we know he has plenty of Grandpa Anarchy stories that need a read through and critique!).

So, I don’t know if anyone actually showed up. Michael and I pulled a couple pizzas from the freezer for dinner. I worked on chapters 14, 26, and 27 of my current novel in progress. I took a nap. I did some more editing and worked on a new scene. I went to bed early.

I had to come back out and sleep in the recliner, because when I lay in the bed, the congestion in my head got worse and I couldn’t sleep.

This morning, I tried to get up early to get the laundry going. Then I had an adventure with the detects-when-the-lid-is-open switch on the shared washer in the basement. Which led to an informative conversation with one of the neighbors about the washer, some plumbing oddities in the building, and related topics.

I need to go swap the next laundry loads, now.

Here, go watch some otters playing in the snow:

(See this and two more short clips of the same two otters at today’s of the Daily Otter.