The Invalid

Another day and I failed to write a blog.  Another perfectly good excuse--sleeping in because of slow working through my body of a bad cold.  I am lucky to sense the onset of the common cold, and to act on the sensation by starting to drink lots of water and to take to my bed.  I get kind of nutty, totally drowsy, and yesterday, I think it was, that is to say, Thursday, I lay abed all day long, nodding off much of the time.  As an anxiety ridden person, taught to perform, be industrious, contribute--God, i can hear my mother over and over--, a day of idleness, deliberately "doing nothing," not even reading to improve my mind, is so unlike me that we have to imagine that I was deep in illness.  This morning, after having cancelled my session with the trainer at the gym, i emailed him to suggest that yes, I would come.  After that session, I had a pedi-mani as they call it over at the Spa in the mall, and then a quick drop by the supermarket for a few things and home for nap, by which time I had cancelled our expedition to an opening at downtown art gallery scheduled for six pm, a meeting with a friend, and a dinner out in Sarasota's supposedly finest restaurant. My husband had been badgering me about taking it easy.  Ah, well.  After the nap I turned myself to making cream of broccoli soup which I had promised my husband for day.  It was, if I may say, delicious.  From that to the television and two episodes of the new drama of the life of Queen Elizabeth II.  How boring can home life get?  That's okay, we are not much for going out in the evening.  I am so shaky, we don't see well, I guess I am okay with life just disintegrating this way.  I still have my wits about me; we both do.  Richard so far this year has read the Iliad in Greek, he's halfway through the Odyssey and just recently picked up Lucretius' De Rerum Natura to keep his Latin up to snuff.  Puts me to shame, the great college professor, whose early article was on Lucretius--wonder how much I could read now? who reads and rereads with unashamed pride the print version of a speech he gave a couple of years ago on the Odyssey (a text much praised by none other than Helen Vendler) who is scheduled in January to lecture on the poem in eight sessions and has yet to pick up the Greek text to refresh myself.  That's it.  I feel my cold lingering--a slight tickle in the back of my throat.  Back to bed.