The flu didn't seem to be going away, and in the meantime an awful, painful rash was marching steadily across my face. All I could do was sleep and take liver-damaging amount of analgesics. So I finally dragged my sorry behind to the doctor and found out that I have shingles.

For whatever reason, this feels very stigmatizing. Like shingles is some sort of STD that I got doing something naughty, rather than an opportunistic virus that made its presence known in the face of some pretty intense stress.

My little kid calls them "Mommy chicken pops," and the Pirate insists that they're barely noticeable, despite the fact that it looks like someone took a cheese grater to my face.

I guess it's the name. Shingles. It sounds so much like an old people's thing. Like gout or rheumatism or bursitis. I'm not quite ready to be old. I haven't accomplished all my goals yet. In the words of Blackadder, "First I want to be young and wild. Then I want to be middle-aged and rich. Then I want to be old and annoy people by pretending to be deaf."

I'm not through with "wild" yet.