Weak is the flesh

Brain say run, body say no way.
Brain say stay awake, body say sleepy time.
Brain say stop coughing, body say TICKLE TICKLE TICKLE.
Brain say why head hurt? Body say you sick, bro.

So I drink lots of water (sorry kidneys!) and tea (Lo, I am become Peppermint Man, enabler of cat hysteria, as the used teabags drive him bonkers) and bundle up and do nothing. None of my normal activities, such as boatbuilding or woodchopping or elephant taming or pit-digging.

Then I realized what I could do was write. Disaster! Suddenly I found myself without excuses ... except this realization:

Writing a book is like building a sandcastle. One grain of sand at a time. You have a pair of tweezers and a tube of sunblock. And the tide's coming in. Off you go!

Whereas reading it is like walking through the completed sandcastle (you have to be a fiddler crab for my metaphor to work), admiring the balustrades and arches and corpuscles and whatnot.

So I wrote. And thought. And scribbled notes. And wrote. Weak is the flesh but the story knows no mercy.