Achoo!

I think I've uncovered the cause of my holiday ennui: I've come down with a cold. It's been creeping up on me for a few days and hit in full force last night, so that pre-cold run-down feeling could explain why I was feeling so blah about the holiday season. In a way, it's a relief, not because I like being sick, but because I'd rather be sick in body than sick in soul. Getting sick was probably inevitable, given the travel (being trapped in a metal cylinder with recycled air and a lot of other people) and the drastic temperature extremes. There was the frigid outdoors/tropical indoors situation in New York, and weather-wise we went from 89 degrees here Saturday to 15 degrees on Thursday.

I've decided to go the easy, yet thematic, route and bring some Dutch cheese on my Delft cheese board to the party this weekend. It's appropriate because my book is out now in Dutch and is apparently doing pretty well in the Netherlands.

I also did most of my Christmas shopping yesterday and I think I've found some good gifts, which makes me feel better about that side of things.

Meanwhile, I'm back to work on the book. I spent yesterday inserting my location details in chapters one through five. Today, if I can come out of the cold haze, I hope to re-write the dreaded chapter six, the one most dependent on Christmas in New York settings and one in which I need to adjust the other stuff that's going on.

But first, I think it's time to crawl under the blankets and take a nap. I took Nyquil last night because I pretty much had their entire list of symptoms and I especially needed the "so you can rest" part of the equation, but instead it really seemed to disturb my sleep. I think Baz Luhrmann was directing my dreams because they were full of weird angles and short, flashy cuts to the point of sensory overload. I didn't remember Nyquil being that hallucinogenic.