My throat feels like knives.

It's kind of a relief though, after weeks of hedging, weeks of feeling vaguely broken and on the verge of really sick. My body's finally decided to go all the way with it. I haven't felt this kind of sick in a long time. This is the way you get sick as a child, when you're constantly being exposed to germs and viruses, the kind of sick that makes you have to spend your life in bed.

Early in the day I got out of bed and went to the store for medicine and the newspaper. The whole way there and back I just wanted to stop and sit, leaning against a wall for a short sleep.

I'm listening to This American Life right now, but my illness is keeping me from paying attention to it while typing. All I know is that it has something to do with yearbook photos and Benjamin Franklin and a man named Walter. It is like this morning when I tried to listen to The Next Big Thing while watching little kids in their church clothes playing downstairs. All I retained from that was that a teacher had his students reading a poem about blackbirds, and every time they said the word blackbird, my head would think the word cherry.

Do I make less sense with every sentence?

Anyhow, when I came back from the store, the adorable woman who lives next door was standing in the hall surrounded by bags of groceries. She moved in a couple of months ago, with who I think are her son and his wife. I hardly ever see them, but I do see her once or twice a week, on her way to or from the garbage room, or with her door ajar and her eyes peeking into the hall as I walk by. I smile and she says hi in the softest voice.

So, I was coming down the hall and saw her there, standing outside of her door, and I smiled and said, "Hello," and she smiled and said, "Hi," and then she held out her hand which was holding her keys, and she said, "It doesn't work," which was the longest sentence she'd ever said to me. I never noticed before that she had some kind of pretty accent that I didn't recognize. She had two keys and the door had three locks, and she didn't know which lock was locked and which key would unlock it, so I took her keys and tried each key in each lock, and, of course, it was the last try that worked. I opened the door, and smiled at her, and handed back her keys. Then there were a bunch of Thank yous and You're welcomes while I helped her carry the groceries in.

She walked me back out and held out her hand to shake mine, but changed her mind and hugged me, saying, "Thank you, you're a good neighbor," while I tried not to breathe out. She felt so frail, and I would hate so much to make her sick. While I was not breathing out I was breathing in, and she smelled like a combination of warm old grandmother and what I imagine frankincense and myrrh must smell like whenever I see the words. It was the perfect sort of comforting hug for the sort of crummy I was feeling.

Now it's Evening Music, and I think time is moving at a different rate inside my head than out of it. Suddenly this computer is far too much, and my head does not want to be upright anymore. Let's get into bed and watch This Old House, alright?