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The sounds my stomach makes are strange, nightmarish. It feels like a storm crossing, that build up and the sputtering, spidering. I've had better starts to a week.

I would feel slothful with my days, if I weren't feeling so miserable. My brain is an absolute fog; I feel awful about how I will look back on reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao because I felt so terrible.

I've felt cocooned too; all this sleep. With the fever, it was toss-on, toss-off, stacks of blankets, wool and down and sweatshirts, then waking in a film, dazed, the sun a long way off, wanting to nudge Ryan awake, beg him to get me ice water, my mouth smacking dry.

But I'm loving this: that the grass has begun to come in, little crew cut tufts, in the places where we seeded, and we've got rain, which means thunderstorms will come soon too (to compete with my stomach, no doubt). I'm loving fruit punch Gatorade because it stays for a little longer. And I'm loving sleep because it is respite just now.

Tomorrow I head to campus; I cannot cancel class again (jury duty, Palm Beach, AWP, I curse you all!) and though I don't think I'll be terribly graceful, I will be present and I will return home, back to blankets and cocooning. Back to watching the robins and storm clouds.