Fever Breaks

On our first date, my paramour had a cold. I knew this going in, and had decided ahead of time that if he were as lovely at the end of the date as he seemed before the beginning, he'd have to be pretty damn sick and drippy for me not to kiss him at the end of the night.

Since he was only a little sick and also only sniffly, not drippy, we ended up making out on my couch. A ways into the smooching, he pulled back and sniffed. A look of horror spread over his face.

"But I'm sick! We shouldn't be kissing! You're going to get sick! I'll have made you sick! I don't want to make you sick!"

"'Sokay," I replied. "I'm a grown up. I know how germs work. And I decided I'd rather kiss you than not get sick."

Flattered, he blew his nose and we put our lips back together.

*

The last few weeks, two things have made blogging a little difficult.

Things are going really well with my lovely paramour. Neurons that used to be dedicated to dreaming up witty blog posts have gotten all tangled up with dreams of romantic pants removal and sharp beautiful cheekbones. So all the blog posts I've been dreaming up have been about how shocked I am that I've met someone who is reliable AND makes me excited in my pants. It's a new leaf, Chez Butch.

Things have not been going so well at work. During the CBC literary salon, I was quite emphatic about the fact that I don't blog about work. And normally I don't, because I have no idea if my co-workers read this. (And if you do read this, I'm fine if you pretend you don't.) Not that I would ever say anything bad about any of them, or about where I work. Because my co-workers, all of them, are really nice people. There's no back-biting, no in-fighting. My boss is super sweet and very good at his job.

But, and you knew there was a but coming, these past few weeks I have been working on a project that was making me want to gouge my eyeballs out. I feel okay writing about it because the four of us who've been working on it have been slumping around the office, looking forlorn and/or tight whenever the subject comes up.

It's a systems analysis project, trying to figure out how we're going to get our members signed up. I took one course on systems analysis in library school. For some reason, I decided that that made me qualified to head this project up.

So I lead us down the fucking garden path, going back asswards, and we get more and more tangled up in bullshit. We four had a very tense meeting yesterday, where everyone was very apparently frustrated and despondently quiet. I ended the meeting by saying, "I think I just need to go away and look at this from the start again. I think this is wrong."

I hit fever pitch yesterday afternoon, when I tore up the processes from the system I had spent three weeks building and stared at my computer screen. I tried not to stress about it last night, and only managed not to because, well, read the next section.

It broke this morning. I spent hours writing out new processes, then presented them to my team, who looked at me like I'd poured sweet cold springwater over their heads. One of them said "Oh, you're very smart." Not smart enough, sadly, to have saved us three weeks of burning anxiety, but at least our temperature is back down to normal.

*

My paramour came over for dinner last night. I made my usual (brown rice, baked tofu, roasted carrots and parsnips, kale), though I fancied up the kale to convince my paramour that it was truly a vegetable worth raving about.

He was convinced. And also kind of sick.

He started out a little sniffly. But by the time dinner was done, he was looking kinda peaked, like being upright was becoming a trial. I suggested the couch, where we sat for a few mintues before he admitted he would really rather be lying down.

So we moved to the bedroom. He crawled into my bed, heaving a sigh of relief, while I went and got my laundry and hung it up and told what were hopefully entertaining stories about my drying racks. Though really, how could a story about a drying rack be boring. I ask you.

I finished a few things and crawled into bed beside him. He was hot, and I don't mean just you're-making-me-want-to-put-my-stuff-on-your-stuff hot, but also wow-your-radiating-flesh-is-making-my-palms-blister hot.

We chatted and looked at each other and managed to still fool around some, which made him at least forget he felt shitty, and then went to sleep pretty early. During the night, I woke up to him stirring a bit. "You okay?" I asked. "Umm," he replied, "I think I might take you up on that advil offer." I laid my palm on his cheek. Blistering. Got out of bed and got him a glass of water and some medicine.

This morning, I woke up and turned to him. I smiled first, because I am still giddy at the fact that sometimes when I wake up, he is right there. But then I felt a small concerned frown lodge itself between my eyebrows.

"How are you feeling?" I moved closer to him. I put a hand on his cheek.

"Damp," he said. "The fever broke."

Cool as creek water. Still hot.