It’s New Year’s Eve 2023 and I’m unraveling. It’s probably due to Covid. If you’ve had it, you know the symptoms. If you haven’t, I’m not going to gross you out on the last day of the year by describing them. I’ll wait until a more appropriate day. Just know that, as I type these words, I am burning up and freezing simultaneously. I also might be hallucinating.

Over the holiday break, when I was healthy, my son and I watched Candy Cane Lane, starring Eddie Murphy. It was a ridiculous, but fun-to-watch movie. I couldn’t begin to describe everything that happened, but I will tell you about the electronic, 12-layered metal tree based on the song, “The 12 Days of Christmas.” Each level had icons corresponding to the day: i.e., a partridge in a pear tree on the first level, two turtledoves on the second level, etc.

Now, here’s where it gets weird. Due to a disgruntled elf, the icons come alive and wreak havoc and can only be stopped if you yank away the gold rings they all possess. Once you grab a ring, the live icon becomes a 2-dimensional icon. They initially fall to the ground, but they eventually make their way back to the electronic tree.

After everything worked out in the end–as, of course, it did–my son and I agreed that it was a fun movie to watch while gorging on all of the Christmas cookies, crackers, cheeses, and candy that I had stockpiled for such an occasion.

My son went home this past Friday morning and, by Friday night, I experienced the first of my Covid symptoms. My well-being only deteriorated from then on. Last night, Saturday night, drugged up on TheraFlu, I began binge-watching The Gilded Age, with my loyal dog, Duke, on the floor next to me.

At about 4 in the morning, I noticed movement under the Christmas tree. As soon as I turned my head, a small black and white mouse ran out from under the tree and into the bedroom next to the living room. Duke didn’t even look up.

I pulled myself up from the couch and went into the bedroom. I looked around for the mouse but he wasn’t visible in the bedroom or in the attached bathroom. The bottom of the bedroom closet contained mounds of winter clothes from the room’s former resident, my brother, who now lives in Florida.

I figured that the mouse was probably somewhere in that mess, so I did what any of you would have done at almost 5 o’clock in the morning. I left the bedroom, closed the door, and stuffed a large gift bag under the door so that the mouse would be trapped. I figured I’d deal with it today (New Year’s Eve) since it’s a generally accepted custom to rid your home of vermin before the New Year rolls in.

The thing is, I only got a quick look at the mouse. I have never seen a black and white mouse before. I started wondering if it was actually a cat.

This afternoon, after waking up and gulping down some more TheraFlu, I decided to see if I had imagined the mouse, or cat. I cautiously went into the bedroom and pulled out all of the clothes and blankets from the bottom of the closet. No mouse, no cat. I looked in every corner of the room. No mouse, no cat. I checked the bathroom, with the same result. By this point, I had decided it was not a cat, because I surely would have detected a cat in the bedroom or bathroom, despite my drugged-up state.

I recently heard someone referring to the First Law of Thermodynamics. At the time, I thought I understood it as meaning mass can change forms but not disappear. It turns out the law is actually about energy, but I decided to go with my interpretation. If mass can’t disappear, then where was the mouse?

Of course, the mouse was probably still in the room, hiding somewhere clever. I, therefore, closed the door again and stuffed the crack at the bottom with the gift bag I had previously used for that purpose. That gift bag is now part of the decor.

Then, I went to the kitchen and poured myself another TheraFlu cocktail. I took it to the living room, to resume binge-watching The Gilded Age. In my opinion, the show was over-acted and a rip-off of Downton Abbey, but it served the purpose of getting me through a long, uncomfortable night.

As I settled myself on the couch, I glanced over at the Christmas tree, mostly to see if the mouse had re-settled himself under it. He wasn’t visible, but what blew my mind was what was visible. I had never gotten around to hanging ornaments on the tree this year–it had lights and pine cones, that was enough–so I know my eyes popped out of my head when I spotted a single pewter ornament hanging from the lowest branch of the tree. The ornament was a mouse.

Did I, at some point during the long night, grab a ring from the black and white mouse? Did it turn back into an ornament?

I had a decision to make. I could quit taking the TheraFlu and endure awful Covid symptoms, or I could keep taking it and resign myself to living in a fantasy world until I was completely cured.

That was an easy decision. Bottoms up and Happy 2024!