Ogden Nash, “The Germ”:

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.

Monday my annual episode of illness arrives. A stomach bug. Never had one before. Now I know. The bug loses no time grinding me under its great big pathogenic boot heel. That Monday is a lost day, a day of half-awake blanket-wrapped couch convalescence and just about zero higher brain function. Not in the mood for reading, music, movies, any of the standard sick-day comfort media. Only a brief fit of internet — symptom-surfing, of course, to make sure I haven’t got the Helsinkian Pig-Dog Lurgy or something. I subsist on a diet of water. With tentative forays into Gatorade, tonic water, Banana Scream protein mix, and powder-packet bird broth.

Tuesday the bug has departed, I’m mostly better, back to work, dining on bread and soup and Saltines. Laura brings home bottles of vitamin water, which taste of delicious health. I appreciate that the label copy on this one Canadian raspberry-apple vitamin-water bottle ends with Pull it together, friend. (On the French side of the label: Reviens sur terre, mon ami. Come back to earth.)