Burning Up On Re-entry

I should have known it wouldn't be so easy. Coming back from hot, vibrant, sensual India to cold, grey, severe Ottawa winter never is. This time there have been a few additional wrinkles.

My last day in Varkala I suspected I was fighting something; there were sniffles and the occasional cough. Cz surrendered her remaining cough drops to me. I got in the taxi to the airport and suddenly I couldn't stop coughing enough to breathe. Some cough drops and water later, I was breathing again. I stayed fine through most of the 30 hour transit time, despite the dipshit sitting next to me coughing all over me and my lunch. Thanks, Dude.

Somewhere between Toronto and Ottawa it hit me full force. I was coughing and sweating and my nose was running like a dachshund after a meat wagon. I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

Since then I have been at home running through my hankie collection and drinking a lot of hot lemon ginger. Someone is stirring hot rusty metal filings behind my eyes and my muscles insist they are too tired and sore for any of my shenanigans. The mucus in my head has been playing fun games with me, such as not allowing me to hear or breathe easily but ensuring I can smell each and every gaseous emission my clingy little dog emits.

A few days ago I decided I would cheer myself up by wearing the bright silk lounging suit I had made in India that had caused me so much body angst. (The first fitting of the super shiny shirt made me look like Tubby McHeadlights the Clown and I went and cried. It looked much better when it was finished and I wasn't peering into the funhouse mirror at the tailors'.) I wore my purple silk pants and the shiny orangy-pink silk shirt and did my best sick person lounge about the house. That night I noticed my legs were a bit itchy. The next morning I noticed I was covered in bites from the waist down. Bollocks! My clown pants (yes, I had washed and ironed them) were full of something that had bitten the everlasting piss out of me. I bundled them and the shirts up in a plastic bag and threw them in the trunk of my car. Let's see how those tropical biting bastards like a few weeks of sub-zero temperatures.

So for now I am hanging around the house snorfling and coughing, covered in red bites from the waist down and wistfully dreaming of lush green tea plantations and glorious sunsets over the Arabian Sea and pink sheep.