This Weather...

I have been sick, on and off, for about a week.

On the day following my twenty-first birthday, I consumed so much alcohol that I couldn't feel the symptoms of my illness, but all week it's been nagging at me.

Yesterday my cold made a spectacular resurgence, coming on with fullbodied aches, pains, sore throat, and congestion. I was so miserable yesterday that I actually stayed home from school, and would have skipped today had I been able to make myself miss two days in a row.

Yesterday, as I sat on my couch clutching the flannel pants, tee-shirt, hoodie, and bathrobe I'd wrapped myself in against the cold rain rapping our window panes, I came up with a theory: it's the weather.

Many of you will remember that a year ago I was bragging about temperatures in the eighties and the glory of a Southern spring. This year, it's been cold, rainy, and gray all April, a last vestige of winter that lingers like an unwelcome houseguest.

I can't wait until June, when the heat will overwhelm us. Until then, we suffer.

It will be 75°F here on Saturday, but I'll be in Decaying State, seeing my grandmother.

Summer can't come soon enough.