Truth or dare?

Dare.

I dare you to walk up the two flights to my garret, through my door, up one more half flight, climb over the pink duffle bag that is still on the landing from my trip to Virginia. I dare you to wade through and over piles of junk mail, abandoned shoes, and empty plastic bags from Eckerd, Walgreens, or Giant Eagle. Precariously tiptoe to where I'm sitting, on the sofa after I've finished In Her Shoes for the second time this week, wondering if I'll ever be well enough to work a seven hour day again.

(As I reread this, my mind whispers, Drama Queen! But I have only made it to six hours since I got sick three weeks ago, and that was last week. Somehow the weekend made me more tired--blast those Congressmen!! Yesterday it was three hours, because I had a midafternoon cry-fest, and today it was four because I was very late and then I left an hour early.)

Truth?

My dinner is in the microwave, ready. It's an Amy's, an Indian dish. I just heard the audible click that let me know it's time to wait my one minute before opening the plastic the rest of the way before I eat the rice and green stuff.

I was late today. I have been late to everything this week. I'm often late because I couldn't pull myself away from email or your blogs. (Not that I blame you!) This week I can blame Congress for changing the time, and for my stupid sinuses, and the relentless depression...

All the mommies and nanas and the one daddy were sitting crosslegged on the floor, with their little ones. As I opened the door, and came in, they all sighed with relief. "The lady's here." As if, now, the show goes on. I shut the door, even though I knew there was one more mommy coming; I'd let her walk across in front of my car in the parking lot. I wondered if she saw that I was the driver, if she recognized me. Her son's name is straight off the cover of a Charles Dickens novel...old-fashioned names always surprise me. There were two Tylers, a Joshua, and a lovely Lilian.

Even feeling as I am, sort of out of my body, the songs come, the rhymes come, and we're all on the floor, singing the "Itsy-Bitsy Spider," or "Row Row Row Your Boat." I love how the mamas hold their little ones as they sing sparkley-eyed to "You are my sunshine. " There's a flannel sunshine that I put up on the flannelboard, and I always say we have to sing about the sun because we don't see it enough in Pittsburgh, but really, I sing it because they are. They are my sunshines, my only sunshines. Wednesday is the day that I get to hug my stuffed pig, Olivia and sing "You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away."

I went to the Sesame Inn for lunch. It's a step up from my "local Chinese" and a little further away. I didn't want to go where the waiters see me come in, day after day, by myself, with a book.

At 4:14, I finally gave up pretending I was going to get something done at my own desk (I'd manned the children's reference desk since after lunch--the dreaded 2-4 shift when all the teens from the lower high school take court in our two departments.*) I walked back to the reference desk where my boss was working on a report for the library board that she's probably giving as I write these words. "Do you need me anymore?" We chatted a bit and finally she said, "Go home. Get healthy!"

I barely stayed awake on the drive home. But when I got home, I was too tired to sleep. I finally put in the standard sleeping video these days, A Knight's Tale, and tried to focus on the story. I drifted off...

I should go eat my dinner. I should drive to Walgreens and get the plug in Vics thing that my boss's daughter swears by. I should come back and take five steaming hot showers and pray that finally my sinuses will start to drain.

You know, I love how on the last page of Where the wild things are, Max comes back to his life, his house, his room, and his dinner was still hot. Guess I'll go see if mine is.

*Unlike many libraries, who have split the YA and Children's departments, placed them even on different floors of their buildings, ours are side by side. A glass wall separates the smaller department from the larger one.