my head a moon of japanese paper

My love affair with my new place has come to a rather ignominious end. Raise your hand if you saw it coming.

I still love it here. But we are well into the double digits of October and still have no heat or cooking gas, with no end in sight. And I can't even get mad because not only are my landlords the nicest family alive, the situation is all red tape and city bureaucracy and therefore entirely beyond their control.

I also managed to contract the stomach flu of the century (an affliction I originally imagined—and still suspect—to be food poisoning wrought by the friendly neighborhood Pita Pan...) So I have been out flat since Wednesday night, beset by fever, aches and intestinal scourges. The mere smell of food nauseates me. I'm subsisting on white rice and Saltine crackers alone.

But here I am in bed at four pm on a Saturday afternoon, covers up, church bells in the background, and I'm sucked right back in. The Good Samaritans, my landlords, have already sent up two batches of chicken soup (which I can't eat because I wouldn't be able to keep it down and anyway I'm supposedly vegetarian) plus their son gave me his personal space heater to keep warm.

Really, the worst part is having to give back the Wolf, who has so thoroughly wormed her way into our hearts that the loss of her presence will likely ruin our already tenuous grasp on domesticity.