Little gifts and bad behaviour

Beautiful things have happened to me in the last few days, which reminds me that we often get what we don't deserve:

1. Yesterday a horse ate a piece of carrot from my hand and I nearly fainted with fear. I've never been that close to a living creature that big. I know, this doesn't sound like a positive experience but it was. I want to do it again and avoid having stars interrupt my vision.

2. Today an amīcus-type bought flowers and put them in front of me. I don't know what they're called but they're yellow and that's enough to make me happy.

3. Another amīcus-type is teaching me Latin and started tonight. He did not make me feel stupid.

4. Two nights ago my māter-type called. She made me remember that she knows me and loves me. She made me remember that I know her and love her.

5. A few days ago the flower-giving amīcus-type saw me boiling my mooncup on the stove. She says she thought it might have been, I quote, "Some kind of egg-white something". Hilarity as I imagine someone attempting to eat my mooncup.

6. I am being threatened by a confused tickle-hater. Again, hilarity.

7. Last night, Tickle-hater called me while I was on a long and complicated train journey. He made me less stressed about travelling although he didn't know it. He reminded me that the world is big, in a good way. He didn't know he was doing that either.

Feeling ill has the capacity to reduce me to truly negative adolescent behaviour. It is startling how easily self-pity and low tolerance multiply themselves when prompted by a fever. An amīcus-type and I had an argument about two and a half years ago over whether sickness and tiredness change the way we are or simply reveal that beneath the surface we are horrible people. He believed the latter. More because there is opposition in my blood than because I disagreed, we had an entirely unnecessary and overly-heated debate. In the time since, I've been humbled enough by my own bad behaviour to agree with him that maybe our weakened defences do reveal something about the kind of people we are, lurking beneath. Yet I behave like a child and still receive all these little gifts over the last few days.

Bizarre.