Saturday, September 22, 2012

Early Birds and Catching Worms

When I opened up the mailbox today I found a letter addressed to me, from me.  Self-addressed stamped envelopes always throw me for a bit of a snail-mail loop. There's some metaphysical thing going that I'm not philosophically astute enough to analyze, but basically, it's déjà vu in a business-sized security envelope. 

I wrote the letter the morning of the last day at writer's camp, sealed it up and handed it off to a woman named Pat, who promised to mail everyone's letter out at some undisclosed point in the future. This was one of those self-check-in letters to follow-up on a week dedicated to talking about writing, thinking about writing, listening to other people's writing and even actually doing some writing, too. Toward the end of this Dear Jen letter, my back-then self asked my future-self if I was being true to the small list of personal goals I'd established to help hone my writing craft. When I read the list today, I wanted to kick my back-then self in the arse. What was I thinking? Really? That goal? Again? I shook my head and thought, "Don't I know myself better than that? Maybe I'll just never learn." 

I wish I had a tally of all the times I've said or written in a journal: "Tomorrow I vow to get up an hour earlier than normal and  ________."  At various times in my life the blank has been filled with: do yoga, meditate, go for a walk, write personal morning pages, go for a run, write fiction, revise fiction. 

Not once have I been successful at this self-improvement goal. Yes, I love worms. In 5th grade I sported stickers in the upper right corner of my desk that spelled out, "I (heart) Worms". But getting up like the proverbial early bird to catch them is just not in my constitution. Or so I tell myself. What if I could do it though? For some reason I can't seem to shake the idea that there must be magic present in the early morning hours and if only I could get my ass out of bed I might harness some of that magic for myself. It feels like a character flaw that I can't overcome the desire to push the day's beginning off as long as possible. It seems like if I could just change my night-owl into an early-bird, something would be better. But I don't really know what exactly. 

I never stop wondering what it would be like to become a morning person, to add one more hour to my day, a quiet hour. Maybe there would be magic in that daybreak hour, maybe I would come to love it, to rise from bed not with dragging feet but with an eagerness for my day to start. For many things in life I believe that we can change our behaviors with practice and persistence. I should be able to will myself into a morning person, set the clock earlier, get up out of bed and carry on. Repeat until it's a habit.  And so, here it is on my list again. Maybe this time...this time....this time...

Stay tuned....





Sunday, September 9, 2012

a run on Simple things

I worked a good day with people and at a job I love then dined on delicious food and drink with a friend for 3 hours that felt like 30 minutes, leaving us with so much more to discuss next time, next time, then drove home on congestion-free roads to my simple home where I stepped out of my car under a galaxy of stars poking pinholes in the night,  to eavesdrop on the melancholy conversation, "who cooks for you, who cooks for you",  between distant Barred Owls.

Gratitude for all the beauty that surrounds my existence.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Do you have this problem too?



Pardon me for a moment while I talk about something unbecoming to a proper lady like me (hey now, is that a guffaw I just heard from you?). Car seats and shifting underwear - it's a real problem. Is it just me or is it truly impossible to remove oneself from the driver's seat without also then needing to adjust one's underthings? Maybe it's how I get out of the car. Maybe it's my underwear. Perhaps this is the unspoken reason why people opt for the "luxury" of leather seats at some point in their lives. Or does this still happen even on the decreased friction of leather? 

Do you notice other people adjusting their underwear right after they get out of the car? I'm not sure I've noticed that, and believe me, I'm watching. Or maybe people are more tolerant of skewed underwear than I am. Maybe the popularity of thongs has made car seat wedgies a moot problem. Perhaps the perpetual wedgie given by dental floss underpants offers benefits that I've been ignoring. 

Does this happen to you? If not, what do you think accounts for your ability to remove yourself from your car without underwear disruption?  And please spare me the obvious answer. I don't want to know that about you! 

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Writer's Camp Fallout



Fair to middling
Mediocre amateurs,
Word, words, his, hers,
Words, words, words, blurs.
Unhinged.
Unopened.
Unable to stop.
My, his, her words,
blurs,
wordswordswordswords.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The fall of a giant

We idle three cars back from where the road worker turns the STOP toward traffic and the SLOW toward the yellow dinosaur juttering up the narrow road on its steel caterpillar tracks. All the workers wear reflective safety orange and should look burly, out-sized, like they do on the village roads. But down here in the hushed ravine, under the soaring forest cathedral, they seem almost inconsequential, furtive even. They know how the tree will fall.

It's just one more tree in a forest jammed so full. I know there are others waiting in its shadow. But this tree is not ready. In fact, there's never been a tree less ready to meet its end. Look at it and tell me otherwise. Look at how it stands there, proud without ego, strong with no effort, a sentinel along a ribbon of road, secured to a rocky stage. Think of how its gnarled and knobby roots reach down into the earth, beyond where our eyes can see, into the soul of the forest, with depth and mass that must rival what we see above.

The backhoe's bucket has been removed. Just a cylindrical metal finger juts from the end of the jointed arm. It rises up toward the prepared tree, makes contact with the wood and taps. Once. Twice. Like it's nothing more than a friendly finger hoping for the tree's attention. That's all it takes.

The first crack of the trunk's base - so big around that three of those men couldn't encircle it with a group hug, if they did that sort of thing - sounds like no more than a chicken bone, snapped in greasy fingers. Then a pause, space just big enough to take and hold a single breath before the King's Mast of a tree rends through a ringed century of growth. Boughs that towered since before these men were born, boughs that offer gentle benediction to the beech, maple and hobble-bush below, topple, whoosh and whoomp down through the arms stretched toward it. The sound never seems as big as it should. The moss and ferns, the deep years of duff, muffle the fall.

An orange, safety vest spins the STOP to SLOW.  Another catches my eye as we pass. His lips press together, his face is grim. Like mine. He nods once and I reply.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Time's Messenger


Maybe the news you've come to tell me is unexpectedly good. Maybe, as Time's messenger, you've screeched into my driveway with raucous honks, pounded at my back door on the night of my birthday, to tell me that from now on, Time's passage will be different.


The montage of my thirty-eight years bullets by like scenery through the window of a bullet train, smeared  into a silky ribbon of visions that slips through the grasp of my mind. Even just twelve years ago is too far gone to remember with any truth, it seems. "What did we cook for dinner back then, back on Walnut Avenue in Belmont?" I ask my husband. I can't remember. But neither can he. We shake our heads, laughing at our inability to remember such a simple detail and change the memory question to something more recent, more tangible and solid: "Did my parents bring us this old green couch when we lived on Dorsch Hill or not until we moved to Springfield?"  Consensus is shaky and takes a while to form. "It's gone by so fast. It's just a blur almost" we agree.


So maybe you're standing here on the threshold of my house, smirking at me because you've come to grant my wish.  Just moments ago, I'd squeezed my eyes shut, let the last line of that awful, annual anthem drift away and puffed out the candles on my cake and thought : "Oh, Time. Please slow down. Please. It's all so good now." 


Because suddenly, life is flying by. That's the catch. Once you figure out where to find your joys, the things that fill you with wonder, the love, the friendship, the connections to be discovered around every corner, time starts to go faster. I swear it does, like some kind of quantum mechanics riddle. Once you find the secret to uncovering all the nuggets of beauty, life speeds up.  I want to savor it all two times, no fives times, no infinity as long! 


And so here you are Time's Messenger, telling me with that smirky smile that you shall grant my wish. For me - no more speeding bullet train. For me - time will become like a butterfly that floats and pauses, meanders and rests.  And oh, how I rejoice at this bit of unexpected good news!  Until I realize that I can't have it both ways. There can't be both infinite time in this life and infinite moments of beauty, wonder, friendship, love.  Those things are precious because of their inevitable end, because of my inevitable end. And yours.        And yours.         And yes, even yours.  


So, Time, I take back my wish. I retract the breath that extinguished the candles on my birthday cake. Fly the way you will. Let the years blur by, the days feel too short. Let there not be enough hours to in the day to wonder over ever bit of Nature. Let me never have enough time to read Nabokov until I fully understand his dizzying prose. Let there never be enough years to hold my husband's hand as we listen to the silence of a black and starry night. 


Time - do your thing. Race!  And I'll do my best to keep up. 

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hello, Summer!

I've always been a lover of summer. Long days, fireflies, sun tans, bare feet, bare shoulders, skin touched by warm breezes, cool lakes for swimming. Yes, insects like mosquitoes, ticks and deer flies are a serious nuisance (especially the ticks), but the butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and hundreds of other interesting insects available for observation make up for it.  And let's talk about the heat. I know many people hate it and I can sympathize. I feel that way about being cold, which I am for most of the winter. Today it's 98 and humid. Sweat trickles down my skin under my dress as I sit here typing, barely moving. And I like it, dammit. For someone who spends most of the fall and winter covered in goosebumps even while cocooned under triple and quadruple layers, this heat is a relief. I know that sounds crazy.

No, I don't want the heat to linger forever and I wouldn't love it if I worked an 8-10 hour day in the fields and greenhouses or on a road crew somewhere. But for the first day of summer I wouldn't want it any other way.  I pulled my beat-the-heat Driving Dress (a tropical looking sundress I bought at Reny's in Ellsworth, ME back in the summer of 1998 when my car had no AC and my boyfriend lived a four hour commute away in Cambridge, MA) out of the closet today and slipped it on, always shocked that it continues to fit after all these years. That long-ago boyfriend of mine, he lives with me now, and is bringing home dinner and cold drinks tonight. I can't think of a better way to celebrate the summer solstice.  




















self-timed jumping photos crack me up








Monday, May 21, 2012

Spilled soup

My ears have no more room for listening. My heart has no more room for understanding. My nerves have fatigued of their ability to hold me back from wringing the necks of rude humans shopping for frivolous plants or breaking down in tears at a story of a nephew shot in Afghanistan, or explaining to you why your ears are ringing and that there's nothing we can do about it.  I'm like a bowl of soup filled too full and spilling over; what once was warm, nourishing and sustaining, is now nothing but a mess slopping all over the floor.

Why do I need to find a way to connect with everyone? Why do I need to make everyone else feel at ease, understood, relieved of their burdens?

Why does my way of interacting with the world end up overwhelming me? Why can't I figure out a better way?

Solitude.  I need you.


Thursday, March 22, 2012

Toothbrush Technology


If you're like me, you probably wait too long to replace your frayed and splayed brushing device. Or maybe you're one of those people who uses batteries and replaceable heads.  I don't really understand that level of toothbrush technology. It seems like it would be embarrassing to admit that you weren't capable of handling the responsibility of brushing your own teeth. It's a wonder that the electric toothbrushes don't automatically tweet to your dentist and update your Facebook page: "OMG! I'm brushing my teeth!" Or text reminders to your phone: "WTF, you left the house without brushing? That's disgusting."

The dental hygiene aisle puts me in a state of choice-overload panic, much like the grocery store's bread aisle and stylish clothing stores. Maybe that's why I don't replace my toothbrush often enough, make my own bread when possible and haven't had style since, well...ever. Overwhelmed with choice, the consumer in me retreats to the safety of buying nothing.  So the toothbrush aisle: name brand, store brand, angled-head, flexible handle,  massaging bristles, color coded, compact, regular, single-pack, 3-pack, on sale, full price. I just want one damn toothbrush that doesn't need a list of parts and features on the back of the box!  Just think, there are highly educated toothbrush engineers working on the problem right now: what will be the next leap forward in dental hygiene technology?  One can only dream.

 No matter what choice you make in the dental hygiene aisle, using a brand new toothbrush ranks right up there with pulling slouched socks back to their proper height.  But never did I imagine that chevron-shaped ridges could alter my brushing experience so dramatically. Those little nubbles on the back of the brush? Genius! Suddenly, something I've done every day since I started sprouting teeth, is new again. The moment the back of the toothbrush slid past the inside corner of my lips, my eyes widened. Whoa! This feels cool! (yes, I am always that eloquent while brushing). And it made sense. Our lips are full of nerve endings. The surface that touches our teeth doesn't usually get much stimulation while brushing, so the sensation across the inner surface surprises your brain with input. Was I being titillated by my toothbrush? What were those toothbrush engineers doing to me?  As with most good sensations, it fatigues after the first few back-and-forths. Which is probably for the best, otherwise, I might just stand there all day brushing, amazed by the fact that, Whoa. This feels cool!

The day after my first nubble-backed brushing experience, I was in the checkout aisle at the grocery store, waiting my turn. I noticed toothbrushes hanging above the candy -  you know, for all those times when you want to impulse buy a toothbrush along with a deck of playing cards, 5-hour energy shot, and sex advice from Cosmo. (Hmm...that sounds like the recipe for a creepy date.) They also had some kind of ridges or bumps on the back. It's clearly the new "it" thing in toothbrush technology and I'm in favor of this advance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I just finished breakfast and I need to go brush my teeth.








Monday, March 19, 2012

Separated by too great a distance

The four hundred pound man lay face-up, immobile, at the end of the mossy alley. One ambulance had already peeled away from the curb, red lights revolving, sirens screaming. Out of a second, quieter, ambulance, medics wheeled a gurney. Standing around, watching the scene unfold were some of the town's most undesirable. Grown boys who would never be called men, loitered at the mouth of the alley looking like perpetrators. One pale, twiggy kid tugged against the metal-prong collar of a pit-bull as I walked by. It wasn't even Spring yet, but unseasonably warm weather - high 70s and sunny - brought out the summer clothes ahead of schedule. Their long, loose, NBA jerseys, showcased scrawny arms, white and weak. Red and black polyester shimmered in the sun. Shoddy scrawls of blue-black tattoos adorned their bodies, signifying nothing to me, but perhaps everything to them. Rural thugs, fed on high fructose corn syrup and cigarettes since birth, (second hand followed too quickly by first) some with missing teeth, some with missing cognitive abilities, all with nothing to do, intimidated me. Conversation halted as I parted their sidewalk gathering.  Down the alley, the man-in-blue (tall, clean, broad, armed),  loomed above the 400-pound man, talking to the only woman in the mix - she and her t-shirt were both too thin, an ACE bandage wrapped her arm.

 I had the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction weighing down my little red backpack. I'd walked 2 miles to the library to return this hefty tome and check out a few other light authors: Thomas Paine, Saul Bellow, Samuel Beckett, since, hey, there he was in the general area of Saul Bellow.  I finished my business quickly  hoping that I might be a chance bystander as they hoisted the 400-pound man onto the gurney and wheeled him to the waiting ambulance. How was something like that managed - with the weight and the alley and the people loitering?  But the alley looked back at me, empty. The cop and the woman were still talking, but out on the sidewalk now, in front of the cafe window. Without any sense of urgency, the ambulance pulled from the curb, lights revolving, a few brief siren blasts as it pulled into traffic. Was its passenger dead?  Over my shoulder, with my ears straining backward, I heard the police officer ask: "And where's the baby now?"  The woman started to answer, but too much distance separated me from the scene, from those people. I couldn't hear her answer. Not without stopping, not without an effort. 






Thursday, March 8, 2012

Thriving

Me and Rosemary - April 2009

Back in April of 2009 I nurtured our rosemary plant through its first long winter. That was three years ago. Take a look at Rosemary now. What's funny, is that the snow blower is still back there in the same spot as usual, but you almost can't see it because the plant's too big.

Me and Rosemary - March 2012



Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Becoming Our Mothers

If you are now, or ever have been, a daughter perhaps you'll understand. I can't say if these observations hold true for sons. (Does it seem strange to you that three out of four nuclear family roles are two syllable words: mother, father, daughter and then bam! - son - showing up with just its single, solid syllable?).

If you were lucky, like me, and born to the best kind of mother, there was a time when she could do no wrong. Your world revolved around her love, her approval, her kindness, her all-knowingness, her hugs, the way she told stories or made cookies. In turn, her world revolved around you.  

But then you got older and you started to see you'd been wrong. She wasn't perfection, not really, you'd been mistaken. How could you be so blind to her faults for all those years? To hell with that, I won't be like her! you may have said sometime in the two decades between 12 and 32. Those were the years you broke away, saw how other people lived, maybe went to college, became the most annoying of creatures: a privileged young idealist. You may have turned on your family, dating someone they didn't like, moving far away, judging them harshly and often. You launched yourself out of the gravity pull of mutual orbit. All good and necessary, but never a very flattering time. 

Eventually your 20s faded and with it some of that idealism and, I don't know why, but that also may have been about time you found yourself whispering in horror, "oh my god, I sound just like Mom." Or even worse, you felt your face or body act in such a way that for an instant you looked or moved just like her. You could feel it in your guts, in your bones. You may have panicked and said to yourself and to your very best friend since childhood, "I will not be like her! You have to promise to tell me if I'm getting like her." And that's also when you realized that you'd heard those words before. You remember hearing your own mother say that about her mother, usually after a long holiday visit or car ride with your grandma. Your mother would finally be free, she'd sink into a chair with exhaustion and say, "Please shoot me if I ever get like that."  You remember laughing, nodding and promising you would while thinking, but, Mom, you kinda already are. And you thought it was funny, quaint, that your mom couldn't see the inevitable happening to her. 

As your 30s rolled along you slowly resigned yourself to "being like mom" in the way you left the toaster-oven on long after your'd finished eating your snack, or left the mail sitting out next to the garden because you got distracted by some weeds on your way back from the mailbox. The weeds made it to the compost pile, but then you noticed that the blueberries needed water and so you did that and then you heard the kettle's distantly shrill whistle and remembered that you'd been boiling water for tea . The mail neglected until your husband came home from work and noticed it gathering evening dew by the tomato plants.

When you'd get together with your mom, you'd still notice many of the patterns and habits that could get under your skin but you tried not to let them bother you. You stopped vocalizing your judgments about her life and her approach to the world. Not because you'd become a more mature person, really, but because you realized that you, too, were permeated with faults in behavior and thinking, many of them similar to hers. Calling attention to her short-comings would be calling attention to your own. Such judgement was uncomfortably close to your own skin and psyche, so self-protection kept you quiet.

But then, if everyone made it this far and you eased steadily toward solid middle age, your mother's mother - your grandmother - began to fail. Maybe you watched this process from a distance with fear and humility. The daughter became the caretaker. Illicitly, she brought Cheez-itz and candy to her mother, one small joy for both of them. Your mother's every waking thought, and probably her dreams, became filled with "how do I help her get through this?"  A mutual orbiting returned for a brief flicker of painful time until it was finished, save for your mom getting down to the business of consolidating a lifetime of memories. 

And maybe a year or so after your grandmother's death, you began to see a profound beauty in the inevitability of "becoming our mothers". Maybe you got to spend a few days with your mom, you listened to her ways of talking and saw the mannerisms you share. You no longer got annoyed with how she interrupted her own quiet reading with interjections like, "Huh!" and "Wow!", so that you always asked, "What?" as she told you about something interesting she'd just read. You don't get annoyed because you heard yourself doing the same damn thing. And you knew that she couldn't help it, couldn't stop herself from doing it, because neither could you.  That was when it dawned on you that, dammit, there isn't enough time left. This will all be over way, way too soon, even if it's 30 years down the road. You imagine orbiting around your mother again, not as a child but as the caretaker. How will you negotiate that strange and looming landscape together?  And then, how will you negotiate your own without her? 

Someday it will happen, there's no way to stop it, you can't pretend anymore that it won't. And so you let yourself imagine what it might be like.  You imagine, when you sit at the piano there will be times when it's not you playing, but her ghost, rolling the big chords and holding the sustain pedal down too much. Even in the way you play the piano you've become "like your mother". The hemming and hawing over the mistakes and difficult passages, will not be your voice, but hers echoing in your ears.  When you walk over uneven terrain and your body moves awkwardly, you will feel that your are not yourself, but her.  When you leave things behind at other people's houses or your purse at a restaurant, your best friend will teasingly call you by your mother's name and you won't feel embarrassed, but proud and connected to your past.  "Damn, it's really happened. I'm just like my mother."  And so maybe, as you imagine this dreaded inevitable future, if you're lucky, you get to a point where you realize that in the time you have left there is no room for judgment and criticism.  Becoming our mothers is how we carry them forward, not just in our memories, but tangibly, visibly in our own gestures and habits, embedded in our own flesh and bones. There is no longer room to force her to fit some idealized "mom" shape and no time to fear "turning into her".  If you're lucky, you understand that there is only room and time enough for love, however you understand it.  



Saturday, February 4, 2012

Promo Poster Caution

Before placing your gig promo poster in the restaurant's bathroom, consider the potentially unintended humor your band name may create.  Also, when writing promo poster content, consider refreshing your memory regarding excessive use of adjectives. Consider employing stronger verbs and nouns instead. This ends the "Promo Poster Caution" public service announcement.  Thank you.

And the creepy continues...


I know you've all been waiting patiently for more images and stories of decapitation. Cozy Toes is, after all, the smart internet surfer's main source for such educational treasures. Your wait is over! Here in Cozy Toes Land, Friday night involved a trip to the inspection 'scope with many months' worth of (mostly) dead insect samples.  A last second inspiration was to take a sprig of my rosemary plant which has some evidence of aphids.  I put that in the container with the insect bits.  Without further ado, here for your viewing pleasure, the magnified treasures. Click on the image if you'd like to see the larger version. Go on, do it. Go big or go home, right? 


Just slightly down and right of center you can see a pale yellow blip of a creature.
I'm pretty sure that's an aphid that crawled off of the rosemary plant. When I looked
through the scope at this (dead) Crane Fly sample, I yelped and jumped back from the desk.
I did not expect to see something crawling around, alive. 

I wish the camera could fully capture how stunning this Cuckoo Wasp looks in magnified glory. 

This is the actual size of the cuckoo wasp. I've been saving this
in a Gladware plastic leftover container since the end of the summer.

This is the husk of some kind of beetle - similar in size to a ladybug. I probably found it on a
window sill while inspecting my rock or feather collections.  So I added it
to the Gladware Plastic Sample Repository for future study.
In this photo, the beetle husk is resting on it's back, allowing us to see the iridescent hind wings
 folded up under the hard outer elytra. 

A small colony of aphids on that piece of rosemary I brought. Dang it!
They are sucking the life blood out of my beautiful rosemary plant!
Actually, several weeks ago I sprayed Rosemary with Neem Oil and the infestation
is relatively under control. I sprayed her again last night and I'll check in another 10 days
to see if I need to do another treatment. She should make it.


Here you can watch one of the aphids plodding along after I disrupted it with some tweezers. Thrilling, groundbreaking, cinematography. I've never tried to capture video with my silly little camera through one eyepiece of a binocular 'scope. Not as easy as you might think. 

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Trajectory of a Coronavirus



Pre Sick Day:  I think I might be getting sick. Yes. Definitely. No. Maybe not. Allergies? Just tired? No, I'm getting sick. X was sick last week and I probably picked it up there. 
Pre-Sick Night: Ugh, I'm definitely getting sick. Stupid sore throat. So scratchy and hard to swallow. It burns! It burns! 

Day one:  Oh, hey. It's not that bad really.My sore throat feels a little better.  I can beat this thing no problem! Bring on the OJ and soup!  I'm winning, I'm winning! 
Night one: Oh. my. god. My brain is clogged with phlegm and it's running out my nose unstoppably. I've used up all the toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom because we have no tissues. I'm sleeping with a bandanna under my nostrils to keep my pillow dry. Just let that snot flow, baby. Ugh, I feel like crap. 

Day Two:  Oh, my god. I'm going to die. I can't breathe. Every time I swallow my ears make a crazy glugging sound and then I can't hear right for a few minutes. I can't taste anything. Every fiber in my body aches. I can hardly keep my eyes open. When I blink I hear my eyeballs creaking. I'll never be healthy again. Waaaahhh! 
Night two:  I will never again be able to sleep. If I breathe through my mouth, my lips, tongue and throat become the Mojave and I wake up unable to produce saliva or swallow. But if I try to breathe through my nose, I die of suffocation. I'll just make a little tent around my head out of my blankets and breathe through my mouth under here like a little virus-breath-filled steam tent. Still no sleep. 

Day three: Hey, I can breathe a little bit! I haven't had to wipe snot for the past 30 minutes! Cool! Wow...look at my nose. Red, raw, flaking skin. Disgusting. Hawrk, hack, cough,  Have I been smoking for 40 years? That is one hell of a barking cough. I go to the store for some cough drops and people look at me like I've got TB. What are you lookin' at, you stupid healthy people. Get outta my way or you're next. 
Night three:  Can't sleep. Can't lay flat without coughing fit waking me every time I start to drift off. If I cough one more time like that  I'll either vomit, hack up a laryngeal fold or cry. Maybe all three. But wow...I think this might be a good abdominal work out program. I will spend the night in the recliner chair watching Youtube videos, drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself. 

Day four: F-U cold! Fine, you're winning. Whatever. I am going to the store and I'm buying DRUGS, dammit! Did you hear me, coronavirus! I'm gonna bring the 'Quil hate to rain down of your MF-ing head, beatch! You're not keeping me down anymore!  I've got things to do, people to see, important life to live!   Ah...Dayquil. The friendly kid sister to the Nyquil nighttime bully. Relief. Why didn't I take drugs sooner? 
Night Four: Well, hello there, anise flavored, syrupy green, elixir for the sick...where have you been all my life. Ah...the taste of sleep and crazy effed up dreams.  Thank you, Nyquil. I love you. See you again tomorrow night?

And so ends the story of the first four days of a coronavirus' trajectory. 



of note: I am not currently sick nor do I hope to become sick with anything common or uncommon. Thanks for sparing me from your potential germs, M.