from the annals of the victorian-era shut-in

I guess being a shut-in isn't all that bad. If I go out of my apartment, I get a fever or my throat swells up. So I just stay in now. Actually it's really very Victorian. I even have a chaise lounge here! (Okay, so it's from Cost Plus, what's it to you.) In acknowledgment of our new lifestyle, Phillip has grown muttonchops and believes himself to have measles.
"Why, beardogs can't get measles, Phillip!" I told him jauntily.
He told me all the rules are changing.

I have been alternating between the following activities:

1. Writing
2. Reading books
3. Reading magazines
4. Reading cookbooks
5. Reading blogs about how other people's homes are delightful and stylish
6. Watching The Tudors on Netflix Instant*
7. Writhing around on the bed clutching at my abdomen
8. Taking my temperature
9. Cleaning

This morning I added a new activity, namely, gulping down codeine. My reasoning is the following: I'm a shut-in now. Now less than ever does anyone depend on me for anything at all. I don't even leave my house. Make an impression on anyone? Seem loopy? Doesn't matter. No one sees me! Therefore there's no reason at all why I shouldn't, every six hours or so, take some pain medication and make better use of my time --- writing, say, or even sleeping --- than crouching on my bathroom floor squeezing tears out and taking deep Lamaze breaths. The real question here is, why does it hurt so much? Aren't I supposed to be pumped to the gills with The Wonder Drug, Tysabri? Aren't I supposed to be so healthy I can barely stand it? I don't know if this has occurred to anyone else, but ever since I started taking this drug, I've been sicker and less a part of the real world than ever before in my life. Fifteen days until my next infusion! Boy oh boy, I can't wait.

*I finished Lost and now apparently have to wait until February to find out what happens next. Terrible anticipation. (Says the person who didn't even know Lost existed until it had been on television for five years.) So I started The Tudors. I had hoped The Tudors would be slightly drier, a little more PBS-meets-BBC than it is --- more, in other words, like history class or a book. Instead it's a lot of horses, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and butts. Not complaining, I guess. The book that changed my life, coincidentally, was about the Tudors. I read The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir during the summer after I graduated from high school. I read it on the Metro to and from my procured-by-simply-hanging-around-until-they-couldn't-get-rid-of-me political-magazine internship. History had never been so awesome. In the fall, I marched off to college, determined to major in all things pertaining to this time period. Turns out, nothing pertaining to this time period was available, but there was this thing called medieval studies, and it was rather earlier than the Tudor period and no one at the college seemed to be interested in it. One week later I was enrolled in a seminar called "The Barbarian North," reading about Huns and Jutes and wondering what the hell I was doing there. Fast forward four years and I had a degree in medieval studies and increased confusion to show for it. A degree in medieval studies? How had that happened? Who actually possessed degrees in medieval studies? God, it was terrifying and wrong. The thing I learned from Alison Weir's book, however, was not about the Tudors. It was that with enough narrative skill, one can make the real seem more urgent than it ever has been before.