Partially

"The right side of my head hurts," I told the pharmacist, having waited patiently at the small plastic stop sign that I assume protected the privacy of the non-existent patients before me. "I'm stuffed up. And it's aching in my ear and under my eye and in my jaw. I can barely turn my head because my neck hurts. What can you give me?"

"Sudafed," she replied

promptly. And we stared at each other for a moment. I finally blinked and asked her if there was a way she could wander over and get some of them for me.

"I need your ID," she requested. "And your signature that indicates you won't make meth with the pills."

"I won't make meth with the pills," I parroted dutifully and punched two of the red tablets through their protective foil immediately upon getting in the car. Then I sighed, hoping they worked quickly.

Apart from a nasty head cold, we've slept and worked while the snow around us slowly melted away. The neighbor girls got a pogo stick and I watched the older girl bounce upon it while I fetched

my recycling bins from the curb. Recent days have brought changes - the white car left, the truck windows shattered - but the net difference is reasonably small. Everyone's now home, all the vehicles parked in their typical spots.

"But I'm ready to go somewhere," I whined when Adam suggested I cancel an upcoming trip to points south so as not to rupture my poor eardrum. "I mean, you look rough," he said, giving a half-apologetic shrug when I glared at him.

I soon smiled, however, when he offered up a trip to Paris. "Decide where else you want to go while you're over there and get me costs."

"Paris in early springtime," I murmured, already pondering Vienna and Zurich versus Italy and Greece. I crave the work as much as the change in scenery. Novel ideas and opportunities to learn rather than endless meetings and the taking of notes while we wait in this in-between phase where no decisions are final and plans are nothing but tentative.

So I'll dream while I decongest.