Four out of five of us are on antibiotics.  Strep.  And I have a viral infection on top of that.  Luckily, the kids are all hale and hearty after a few days on meds, but all I want is my bed.

But that’s not the kind of virus I want to talk about.

Knowing that I was going to be running on half cylinders, I went to the wonderful independent video store around the corner and stocked up.  I asked the people who work at Queen Video to suggest a gripping costume drama, and they suggested Game of Thrones.  Yes!  Perfect comfort viewing, and lots of it.

I tried reading the first book in the Game of Thrones series last summer, but abandoned it after 50 pages’ worth of repeatedly saying, “Wait.  Who is this?  How is x related to y?”  And, “Why is there so much incest?”  I know the fans are legion, but even after getting all four books for a song, I reshelved them.  Each book is more than 800 pages.  Too much to keep track of.  Too many other (shorter!) books on my shelves, I thought.

Until this week.  I watched the first series, and I am now totally hooked, totally addicted to finding out what happens next.  Addicted, I tell you.  So I’ve picked the book up again, and I’m reading what I’ve just watched, filling in what the film can’t cover, and now it all makes sense, even if there is still too much incest.

And I’m not the only one who’s addicted.  My husband would wander into my sick room and get sucked into watching with me.  And now he’s hooked and he wants my book.

“You’ll be done with that soon,” he said this afternoon.

“Oh, yes.  It won’t take me more than two days to read this.”

“No. That wasn’t a question.  You’ll be done with that soon.”

Yes, sir.

“What’s yours is mine,” he reminds me with a devilish grin.

Invoking our marriage vows to take my book!  Sheesh.  The things I do for love….

This kind of virus gets passed around a lot in this house.  One of us will read a gripping book, and soon, we are both or all under its spell.  The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Atonement, The Lord of the Rings, the Jackson Brodie mysteries.  One of us gets the bug, and soon someone else is infected.

So it’s not all bad pining for my bed.  The best kinds of infections are bookish, and I might as well ride one infection out while enjoying the other.