OK, this time I'm NOT FAKING

[ellenkushner]

The right side of my throat is incredibly sore every time I swallow.  Thermometer says I don't have a fever - but what does it know? We only have this incredibly old plastic electric one I've never understood how to use.  It could be giving me temperature in Buenos Aires.  And one final proper glass-and-mercury one - out of what used to be quite a collection, but they break, you know, when you drop them on the tiled bathroom floor as one does....and then what?  You can't even buy them new anymore, can you?  I sway between wanting to use it because at least I know it works (and how) and wanting to leave it in its little blue plastic flimsy holder lest it suffer the fate of its fellow last year, whose holder still sits mute and solitary, a reminder of . . . what? Not to drop this one?  The possibility that really it's off on a bookshelf somewhere and will return, like Peter Pan, if I just keep the holder open?