After three days at home with a posse of cats and a hacking cough, I stumbled back into work today because I desperately need human interaction. At some point yesterday I looked at Bob, who apparently spends all day peering out the windows while standing on his hind legs, and for a moment I may have hallucinated that he was actually standing upright on his back legs and about to walk out of the room.
That was all the sign I needed to tell me that I really, really had to get out of the house.
My boss is happy that I'm back, even if I am spreading what is probably the bird flu to everyone at my office. I had chicken broth for dinner two nights in a row -- if that isn't evidence of full-blown bird flu, I don't know what is.
(Also, have ya'll noticed that in addition to making no sense at all, I am also convinced that if I joke enough about the bird flu it will somehow trivialize itself, much like the Great Monkeypox Outbreak of 2020, and will never materialize into the disastrophe predicted?) (Again, with the hallucinating.)
I have nothing to say. Also, I have nothing to say because I HAVE LOST MY VOICE. For some people this is just a minor inconvenience, but for me, A Talker, this is pure hellatious tragedy. I suck at pantomiming and I have about as much energy as a cabbage, so charades are out. What if I need to call someone? What if I need to yell "Watch Out!" to a passer-by? What if I meet the hot fireman of my dreams today and he falls madly in love with my cat-hair-covered, pale, phlegmatic self and I cannot tell him my phone number?
Because that could happen. Yes indeed.
Anyway. I'm off to heat up a tupperware container of chicken broth now, because I'm sure the best cure for the common bird flu is to drink the soup of a bird. And if ya'll see a butterscotch-colored cat with a beer belly walking upright it's just my cat Bob. Tell him to lay off the Meow Mix.