  Tuesday, bed, flu, feel like shit, feel like I've just turned 85, feel like someone blew into my ear and their breath just stayed in there making my head all fat, feel strangely elated that my condition has led me to pull my laptop over to the bed and surf the net with it sitting on a pillow on my lap. To me this is one of the greatest things in the world: to have cyberworld at your fingertips while you're reclining amidst pillows and doonas and the world is at work and everything's quiet except the mellifluous clackety knocks of your fingertips dancing over the keyboard. I don't blame my poor body for wigging out. I abused its immune resources shamefully over the weekend.
I ate very little, drank very much, slept not at all...and all the rest. I mean I thought I caught up on the sleep factor having gone to bed at midnight on Sunday and sleeping until 3pm Monday (oh the shame), last night was tucked in at 9:30, but during the night I woke to find the marrow in my bones churning and going grey, my whole body aching, feeling hot and cold, and I thought, uh-oh, here it comes.
Called in sick and left a message with Ronnie to tell the boss I had the flu, knowing full well that he would call me between 10:30 and 11 to say something dumb or other. I love my boss, but this habit he has is particularly annoying. "Hi Gem, I got your message, just calling to let you know that you need a doctor's certificate if you have a day off after a public holiday. " "Even though I'm not getting paid? " I have used up all my sick days, and now I just miss out on pay and deal with being broke. "Yeah, I checked up on that, we need one regardless. " I told him I would try, knowing full-well that it's just not gonna happen. I'm in bed here, too fucked to walk up the street and buy some food (I'm starving) or some Neurofen (I ran out) and I'm struggling to sit here on my bed and type, and they want me to walk to the doctors and wait there for an hour so I can hand in something that proves I was legitimately sick.
Fuck that, what are you gonna do guys? Tell me that I'm not your best friend anymore? Fire me? No skin off my flaps. The reason I end up having so many sick days is that I'm not cut out for full time work. That continous malevolent cycle of five days on, two days off, simply does not fit in with my logic or my programming.
I'm much better suited to casual work where I can choose to work 12 hour days and have one or two more days off because a full day off to me means so much - these are the days when I find myself again, when I tear myself away from the mundane loop I feel so caught up in just to pay the rent and the bills, and instead spend the day writing and creating and remembering what life is really about for me. It's killing me, working eight hours a day five days a week in a job that ultimately pays me in exchange for my time. I feel like a whore. Anyone got a job for someone who loves to write, read and surf the internet?
Hello? There is a penis on my wall. It's a photo I cut from a book of photography called "Naked Men" and it's a perfect frontal shot of the head of a penis so that you're looking straight down the eye. Cuzzy hates it, Rene hates it, in fact I think everyone is a little disturbed about it but me - I think it's art, such a perfect round glossy thing, and it makes me think of putting my mouth around one every time I look at it. It's black and white, of course. Full colour would just be crass and might as well have been ripped from a sleazy porn mag. Ohw, my aching self. I'm fading here. I'm going back to supine. 
