I May Yet Survive

Influenza is an ugly thing, even in the garden-variety, not-quite-as-deadly form. Three days into it, my fever has finally dropped enough that I feel like I might actually live. It's a good thing, as I had to go out today to buy more bread (Self checkout lines rock! No need to cough on anyone!). It's looking unlikely, though, that I'll be improved enough by tomorrow to make it down to the alpaca show, which is where David is right now.

For those of you who are just dying to know (all of you, right?), I thought I'd expound briefly on the classification of influenza. The influenza viruses are all in the family Orthomyxoviridae. The family name comes from the Greek roots ortho- (meaning "straight", "correct", or in this case, "true") and myxo- (which the Romans adopted and passed on to us as the word "mucus"). The mucus part is spot on. The snot factory kicked into overdrive, and frequent doses of decongestants are only marginally keeping it at bay.

Now even though "myxo-" is in the family name, this is not related to the myxomatosis virus that Australians, bunny enthusiasts, and Radiohead fans are familiar with. That is actually a type of pox virus. That said, over the last three days I have felt rather a lot like this. And I suppose that someone may come along and point out that there are other viruses that can cause similar symptoms to influenza, but to them I say that it still makes you feel like shit either way.

So, my condition of the past few days has pretty much precluded knitting, as it's hard to concentrate on a pattern when you're trying to catch your breath in between the moans of pain and when every little movement exhausts you and hurts to no end (that and nobody likes snot-encrusted knitwear). Nonetheless, in the moments when the fever has abated a little and I've felt a little less like dying, this has been my primary reading material:



I really love the patterns in this book, and I think I'd like to tackle the fir cone square shawl at some point. First, though, I think I'm going to need to work on my backlog of UFO's a bit. One thing I did manage today was to wash and block (or at least stretch and shape - no pins were involved) the shawl I made for my mother's 60th b'day present. Said b'day was last September and the shawl has been otherwise finished since December, but she'll love it anyway. There will be photos at some point, I promise.