Attempting Peak Garlic

I’m fighting off some kind of respiratory ailment. No doubt I was infected at the courthouse, since only one county employee and five-six of the sixty-odd jury pool (including yours truly) were wearing masks. This irritates me almost beyond belief. So far the only silver lining is that my digestion is fine and I can still smell/taste, so it doesn’t seem to be Covid. It’s probably one of the other two plagues swilling about. Right now my money’s on RSV.

I’m all right in the mornings, but as the day wears on the symptoms get more marked and the cognitive mud thickens. Rest and hydration are helping, and yesterday I self-prescribed allium overdose. That’s right, folks–we achieved Peak Garlic here at the chez. Double-garlic chicken soup (more properly triple, since it was made with garlicky homemade bone broth, minced garlic, and roasted garlic), along with a head and a half of oven-roasted garlic (using fresh bread as a carrier mechanism), went down the hatch in large quantities. More bone broth and roasted garlic will follow suit today, along with sauerkraut brine and gallons of cinnamon tea.

This ailment, whatever it is, has picked the wrong goddamn meatsack to invade.

I’m also attempting easy runs in the mornings, on the principle that exercise endorphins will turbocharge my immune system into a juggernaut of unstoppable, unspeakable voracity, leading it to consume whatever this is wholesale. It’s worth a shot.

In other news, the Winter Portal Fantasy sale is still going. (Check that page, it’s been updated with the Smashwords End of Year sale discounts too!) We just had a re-release of two books, and I think the paperback editions have already sold out. (Which is AMAZING, you guys, you are awesome, thank you.) The only paper versions left at the moment are overpriced third-party money-laundering ones on Amazon, for which I am very sorry, but I as a writer (and the publisher) have no control over that. It’s purely and simply Amazon not doing their due diligence, along with them trying to squeeze reputable publishers by prioritizing third-party sellers and allowing this nonsense. So please, don’t yell at me or at the new publisher. This isn’t us.

The coffee is almost finished, but Boxnoggin is not prancing down the hall to nose me out the door. We had our first real below-freezing night here, and he wants none of that nonsense. Too bad–we’ll be out in the cold as soon as I get some breakfast down. Which will be a bit of a bother, since I don’t want to slow enough to choke down anything, even toast, if it’s not slathered with alliums. I’m sure my attempt at running today will be uncomfortable, too. I’ll either break this sickness or it will force me to nap, and though I am an advocate of naps I don’t tend to like them much for myself. There’s just too much to get done.

Off I go, then. Peak Garlic 2: Electric Boogaloo is about to commence. Be kind to yourselves, my beloveds; this holiday season is turning out to be a right nasty one in some ways…