Old Age Day by Day March 7, 2013

I had a really bad night, with pain in my nostrils and some coughing.  The kind of night that makes you so happy it's over and morning and you can stand upright.  This is quite a cold or flu.  I'm dying to get out, but if I did I'd bring plague upon the world.  I'm bored, and headachy, and cannot figure out how to distract myself.  My whole head needs to be drained, flushed out and screwed on again in a way that is lighter and more comfortable.  In the meantime I will watch the clock, until this virus decides it is through with me. 

I'm worried about friends who are sick and I don't like being unable to help, except to send cards or call.  This is that time in spring when resistance gives in to bugs and aches and in my friend's daughter-in-law's case, pregnancy.  The body rules, and it doesn't give a damn about what we want or expect.  If it falls apart, we must heed the warning, slow down and allow healing.  We're never in control of our fate, but when we're sick, it's a whole heck of a lot more obvious.

Old Age Day by Day March 6, 2013

This is a pretty bad cold.  But I slept well last night.  So hopefully I can get back to getting out and seeing people next week.  In the meantime, I'm reading, watching two DVDs a day and dozing.  Last night it rained, which is much needed.  It doesn't look like it will rain today though.  My brain is kind of foggy with the cold, and I hope I don't get a cough.  I also hope to avoid the dentist today.  Dentists and colds don't go together very well.  I just want the veneer on my tooth to stay glued on.  I'm reading a serious book now by Chris Hedges, a journalist and passionate critic of Washington and our policies in the world.  He's brutally honest and hard to take, but the truth of what he's saying is selfevident.  I may have to go back to something lighter.

I'm bored but not dumb enough to think I should be doing anything but resting.  Ugh!

Old Age Day by Day March 5, 2013

I didn't feel good on Sunday and that night it was as if a faucet turned on.  My nose was runny, my sinuses hurt and I had a full fledged flu or cold.  I canceled everything and tried to rest.  My thoughtful husband brought lunch home and as I was eating I broke a tooth.  So then I was pleading with my dentist and finally got in and discovered it was a veneer that I didn't know I had on my front tooth.  Luckily, my husband had saved it, it was all in one piece and the dentist was able to glue it back on.  So much for a calm day.  This morning I have to go in again, because of my mouth guard.  This resting thing is not so easy to do.  I slept better last night but am sneezing again now and the faucet has begun.  So much for this week.  Maybe next week I'll feel better.

Old Age Day by Day March 4, 2013

I was reading in the newspaper this morning that Joyce Carol Oates is here for a year and teaching at Cal.  She is on sabbatical from Princeton.  I've always enjoyed her work, and once did a week workshop with her in New York.  I was surprised to find she has remarried, to a neuroscientist she met after her longtime husband Raymond Smith died.  Several years ago I read her account of being a widow, and her grief was of a magnatude of Joan Didion's writing on the deaths of her husband and then daughter.  Things change, new beginnings happen even to us oldies.  I feel really happy for her.  She is quite the survivor.  I guess she's working on a gothic tale right now, which is not my favorite work of hers.  But I love some of her novels and I think her short stories are where you find her greatness.  She often illuminatess the lives of people nobody "sees" - the underclass, and uneducated, the ignored and badly parented.  She's very Dickensonian that way.

If she has public readings, I'm going to try to attend one.  It's been many years since I've seen her, but she's a compelling presence.

Old Age Day by Day March 3, 2013

I've been listening to my smoke detector beeping for a week here in my study.  I'm too lazy to go search for a battery.  It's like listening to be baby chick crying for help.  Eventually I'll give in and fix it.  I read a whole mystery yesterday, it was so gripping.  It's this writer Erin Kelly, and she's psycological, and dead on as well as passionate about class and disadvantaged people.  You feel there is a purpose to all this drama, and it awakens questions about what the reader would do or maybe even has done, or almost done.  The reader does not get away with being outside looking in.  This one, "The Burning Air" manages to make us sympathetic to the "good" guys and "bad" guys, in fact, by the end, you can't much tell the difference.

We're off to have brunch to celebrate our daughter-in-law's birthday a bit belatedly.  We haven't seen them in a while so that will be nice.

Old Age Day by Day March 2, 2013

March is coming in like a lamb, maybe it will go out like a lion.  Lots of hysteria about drought is brewing, but who knows?  The weather is crazy, so the parameters of rain could be screwed up as well.

Some of my friends and I saw Handel's "Samson" last night.  It was well done, though the tenor wasn't in full voice.  It was not staged, but still powerful.  I liked the lyrics and the music is sublime.  It was long, and walking from the car there and back was a contrast in generations.  College kids, ambulances, shouting, globs of people and us old ladies merrily winding our way around the huddled masses.  None of us are normally near campus at night, so we forget there is a lively world a mile away from us. 

Poor Delilah, like Eve she gets a bad rap for a simple little haircut.  Why can't the boys in the Bible take responsibility for their actions?  Though there is no true story, if there was I bet it would be a teeny bit more complicated.  Who was pressuring Delilah?  What threats was she under? 

At least Handel makes them more in love and tormented with longing.  And the Philistines being the chorus is delightful, as, near the end, their singing becomes cries and catastrophe and death.  Oops, there goes the chorus again, oops there goes...

Old Age Day by Day March 1, 2013

Well, the March Hare is here and so are budget cuts and drought and all the dramas of the news.  Our male dog had diarrhea all night long, and we were up a bunch, and giving him Immodium.  We'll see how he fares today.  He has been on a tear of eating peppers, puzzle pieces and plants.  I don't know what has gotten into him.

I'm off to the Elephant sale this morning, not really searching for anything in particular.  Last year I returned with a pewter butter dish and a sleeping beauty costume for my granddaughter.  I just love to look, and, though it gets overwhelming, there are treasures to be found.  I'm going with the same friend I went with last year, and we have fun.  Like antique road show, there are some crazy pieces of furniture, lamps and dishes, and very strange jewelry.  We usually try on some clothes as well.  I avoid the books, because I have so many already, but love to look at the glasses, though I have nowhere to put them.  I also check out the embroidered tablecloths, for which I have a weakness.

Then this evening four of us friends are going to a Handel performance, and so I'm busy, busy today.  I hope I stay alert, after the little sleep I got last night.