A Fine Easter Weekend

Brad and I had a joyous Easter weekend, even though some of the more traditional elements (gourmet dinner cruise by night on the Seine) had to be postponed. I have just three words of explanation:

fake crab salad

Personally speaking, this is a substance I would never ingest voluntarily, shellfish allergy or no, because the direct causal relationship to

projectile vomiting

is entirely clear to me. Let's just say that it is now entirely clear to Brad as well, and leave it at that.

But the angel of disease was not about to pass me over completely, nosireebob! Right around the time that Brad was recovering from his 24-hour malaise, I came down with a hideous fever (I WAS BURNING UP, I TELL YOU, BURNING RIGHT UP!) and started hacking away like one of those measle-thelioma victims those lawyers on late-night TV are always warning us about.

Naturally, given my normal hypochondriac tendencies, I gravitated towards this diagnosis first, given that they have been renovating the apartment downstairs ever since I got here, and the ambient levels of dust are spectacularly high. As the hacking subsided and my temperature spiked (at least in my imagination), I traded this diagnosis in in favor of lockjaw. There was this nail I had managed to cut myself on at school during the week, and though close inspection hadn't indicated a trace of dirt or rust, who knows where those wily tetanus germs lurk, and lord knows it had been a long, long time since my last booster shot? I felt abandoned and alone - Brad, now in rude health, was out cavorting, and my sister the doctor in Canada was not responding to my singing telegrams.

Fortunately, I woke up this morning to be greeted by a delicious hot Bushmills toddy prepared by the ever-solicitous Brad. It's amazing what two fingers of Bushmills can do by way of symptom relief.

But here's the odd thing. To celebrate my miraculous recovery I have been singing little nonsense-songs to myself around the apartment - sometimes in English, sometimes in French. For instance, to the tune of "Frere Jacques" -

I'm not going to
die of lockjaw
No I'm not
No I'm not.
Not gonna die of tetanus
not gonna die of tetanus
No, not me
No, not me

One would think that one's guest, and friend of over 12 years, would be touched by this spontaneous display of joy at my own recuperation. But such is, apparently, not the case. How else to explain the fact that, just half an hour ago, Brad stormed out of the apartment, hurling epithets too rude to be quoted in a family blog, the most polite of which was "You're f###ing weird, you know that?"

Go figure!