Suzy Says

I am coming to you from the couch, where I am ensconced with several feather pillows (did I ever mention my pillow addiction? I think the usual number residing on my bed is around eight. It’s less than half that on the couch, though they are beaded and/or velvet to make up for it), and my grandmother’s 80 year old quilt of love. Not only is it pink, but it is made of my mother’s baby clothes, my grandfather’s ties, and some of its creator’s aprons. Not to mention the fact that it was restored by Erica and Megan.

Keeping me company is a mug of chamomile tea (the mug with my initial was one of my favorite Christmas gifts), tiny bottles of Schweppes ginger ale, the creepy-poetic Lincoln in the Bardo, a cheery little read about the recently deceased young son of the great President, and some pills. The cats, as you may have noted, are conspicuous by their absence, when they should be keeping me company in my time of need. I’m pretty sure that’s in the contract. Audrey was busy creating a Dada work of art by removing the toilet paper from its roll. There have been several interested calls from New York and San Francisco galleries. Of course Audrey was just concerned that I had become bourgeois and complacent.

Clyde was up in his no girls allowed club house, aka the storage loft over the bathroom. His stealthy brother also enjoyed hanging out in that difficult to access location, but Audrey never goes up there and I usually enlist the services of a passing boy to get the Christmas decorations in and out of it.

So I am alone on the couch, listening to the rain on the roof/walls, which I no longer find soothing after 61 fun-filled inches of rain. I still enjoy the rain-induced frog song, though. I am marooned here because of an intestinal upset that makes trailing up and down the stairs from the sleeping loft to the bathroom an impracticality and annoyance in my (hopefully temporarily) weakened condition,

I am always shocked and annoyed when I’m ill, feeling that the system has let me down and should be more reliable. In this case, it is extra annoying since I was unable to accomplish any cooking or other house-related activities this weekend, and I was also unable to attend family dinner at Rio’s, where chicken enchiladas and Perry Mason* on the Predicta were on the menu. So I will have to face another week of work with no cooking done and no fun behind me.

Of course, Dr. Megan paid a house call, telling me that not eating for two days was “working against me”, despite the nausea, and prescribed toast, rice, apples, and whatever the pills are. What would I do without her?

*Some fun facts about the show are in this link.

A YEAR AGO: Stormy weather, inside and out. Can I stop worrying about the drought for now?

FIVE YEARS AGO: Rob was working around the house, while I was leaving the housework undone. Each according to his ability…