– By Roz Chast in the New Yorker
I showered, dressed,attended the matinee of Lynn Canal Community Players fabulous comedy (Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers) this afternoon because Chip and my friends said I couldn’t miss it. I assumed since I was presentable and upright that the stupid bug that has flattened me would retreat. It’s all in my head, right? Well, I’m back on the couch with my latest New Yorker, the health issue. I’m not making that up. I wanted to reassure you that I am alive, and while not well, it’s just a virus that makes me cough, especially when I laugh. So I’ve coughed a lot today. However, we all know laughter is the best medicine.
Instead of writing a lot this week (only what I had to for work), I had time for tea with the family who already have had this sickness, walked Pearl (slowly) on the gray beach, and read two books. News of the World by Paulette Jiles is superb. It’s a notch above anything I’ve read in a while. It takes place in Texas after the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels the territory and reads the news– papers, AP wire- to people hungry for it, then he is asked to return a 10 year-old German girl who has been living with the Kiowa people back to her family and the adventure begins. Also, a much lighter in every way, goofy, but fun novel, The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Swedish author Catharina Ingleman-Sundberg. It’s about five Swedish pensioners who become criminals because they don’t like the food and the rules in their old age home.
With any luck, and if my mind finally overrules my body, or my body finally agrees with my mind, I will be up and at ’em in the morning. Or at least by noon. Then hopefully I will return to regularly delivering the news of….. whatever this rag is.
