I've been sick

I'd have written something in these last few days, but I've been sick. I've also mostly been at Melody's. Monday night, I went over to be with her after getting something to eat and something to drink. Tuesday, I woke up feeling like someone had dropped a lot of bricks on me from a great height -- and this after a martini and one mixed drink. Total demolition. I am starting to seriously think that maybe I can't drink any more. I suspect the antidepressants have altered my chemistry in such a way that I react a lot more strongly to alcohol. Oh, well. There are other things to do besides drink.

Tuesday evening, Melody and I were supposed to have dinner with a friend of mine at a place about a mile from Melody's house. On our way over there, I started feeling a little jittery, but figured it was just the air conditioning in the BMW. It wasn't. We walked in, and by the time we sat down, I was shaking and shivering, and sweating lightly. I could feel a fever. By the time soup arrived, I knew I couldn't eat it, and told Melody I needed to be out where it was warm.

I went back out to the car, which was nice and warm from being in the sun, and the shaking eased a little, but I could still feel pain in my joints and headaches. Melody messaged me on the phone when dinner arrived, but I told her there was no way I could eat anything. Nor, I told her, could I drive home and let our friend bring Melody home -- I didn't trust myself to drive. Melody and I were back at her house within half an hour, and I was in bed, asleep, within five minutes. It was barely 8:00.

Melody took my temperature, and it was 102.8. I couldn't eat anything, could barely drink water. I slept for a while -- less time than it seemed -- and when I woke up at 9:30, the sheets were completely soaked, as if someone had poured water over me from the top of my head to the backs of my calves. But the fever had already broken... it was 99-point-something and falling.

I have no idea what happened. By the following morning, it was mostly all gone.

I wasn't the only one sick. Boris has been at the vet's all week, with severe dental abscesses and lack of muscle control. He's been dosed with antibiotics, and they rehydrated him and fed him, but he was quite sick. He's beefy, though, and I think he'll come out of it OK. He's only 13, and I think he has a few more years of beefiness in him. Still, it worries me.

I've become the owner of yet another Saab, a 1985 with an automatic. I figure if I'm going to be driving more in city traffic now that I'm seeing Melody, I don't want to trash the good Saabs by blowing the clutch and cooling system in traffic in DC and suburban Maryland. The gray Saab is up in Pennsylvania getting new wheel bearings, and the new Saab will be going up as soon as I pick it up, for a new rear main seal and new water pump, as well as a general going-over. For $1400, the car was a good deal. It's absurdly clean. I told Melody this, and she asked, "do you think it'll STAY clean?" and I told her, "not if I drive it much."

I have a tendency to live out of my cars.

Melody and I have actually started to toy with the idea of being married. Not really talk about it, but just sort of... play with the idea. We have decided that we won't start talking seriously about it until October.

Speaking of which, in taking new wheel bearings up to Pennsylvania to Dave's shop (to go into the gray Saab), I stopped off at Penny's to give her some more spring water, and got to meet the guy she's dating now. He seems like a very nice guy, though I thought perhaps he was a little nervous about meeting ME. Didn't talk much, except to mention... places and stuff. He and Penny are planning on traveling to the Caribbean in a few weeks.

What was eerie for me was how little physical tension there was for me toward Penny. I mean, this is someone with whom there used to be incredible physical attraction, of the can't-keep-hands-off variety. But in this case, for the 20 minutes I was there, it was mostly like "here I am, visiting a good friend and meeting her new boyfriend." It was so easygoing it didn't even occur to me until after I left that it had represented an enormous change in barely two months.

As I was leaving, I also took Penny aside to pass on one other thing: at Melody's request, I had taken an HIV screening, and it had turned up negative. I figured she'd want to know. She did say, "you know, I hadn't even thought about that until today." She did appreciate it. She can go forward into her life and not worry about anything now. I like that. I like that for me, too. And Melody. And since she's dinging me in IM, I am going to go talk to her.