Sick and Tired

I’ve been in Seattle, visiting family and pet-sitting, for a week.

I’ve been sick for nearly the same duration.

I had a few days of relative normalcy and then—immediately after driving back from the dock where I dropped my sister, brother-in-law, baby nephew, and parents off to board a sideways skyscraper-scale ship for a seven-day cruise—WHAM, I nearly collapsed with exhaustion.

My brain was cloudy, my focus nonexistent.

I was congested, it hurt to swallow. I could barely grunt, muc...