Just keep repeating: It's only a side effect of the flu shot. It's not a cold. It's only a side effect of the flu shot. It's not a cold.
Oh, heck, dear friends. I don't know who I'm fooling with this. It's a cold, and while it isn't bad enough to keep me out of the box factory, it was bad enough to send me nearly sleepwalking through the subway and directly to the lumpy armchair in the living room. It was bad enough to render me unfit to do anything about dinner except make cheese toast; fortunately, I had the last quarter of a loaf of rice bread, a raw-milk English farmhouse cheddar, and a young man who does not turn up his nose at cheese toast for dinner. (To those dear friends who wonder why Lloyd did not take care of dinner for me: oh, he tried, he tried. I was too damn exhausted to answer the question "What would you like me to get for dinner?"
It was not, however, bad enough to keep me from discovering that we still had nearly half a chocolate-cherry bread from last weekend's market haul, or to keep me from buttering the little 8" square Pyrex dish, from beating together 5 eggs, 3 cups of milk, 1/2 cup of light brown sugar and a pinch of salt, from cutting that excellent loaf into cubes, from saturating it with the eggs and milk and sugar, or from baking it for 40 minutes in a slow oven (preheated to 350 degrees, then turned down to 300). It will take much more than a cold to render me unfit for bread pudding. For small mercies such as this, I am glad.
I’ve got to stop sending you emails when I’ve got a cold. Apparently they contain viruses. Anyway, thanks for taking on the burden of this one—I’m feeling all better now that I passed it along.
Feel better soon.