A Reign of Frogs and Toads

Here's the story.  I came back from my trip to Pennsylvania in good health and full of good feeling and then...  When the beloved husband, A. and I finally went to the doctor it turns out to be gastroenteritis.  Both of us.  Days and days of it.

We stayed hydrated as best we could, surviving on water and thin broth, and slept between intestinal eruptions.  It was not pretty and it was not pleasant and I will spare you the gruesome details.

And then, when I finally felt better and could manage solid food, I got hives; head to foot, scalp to soles, itchy, miserable and ugly.  (Evidently there was some chlorine bleach used in washing my undershirts.  Delicate, Irish skin, don't you you know.)

I'm better now, but I'm pretty sure that soon either my cattle will die, or their will be a plague of locust.  Maybe a rain of frogs.  Why not?  These things happen.

Suffice it to say, I was able to read little and write less.  As a result, this particular enterprise was spared not a thought and so fell well behind.  Likewise our podcast for the bookstore, my contributions to Tumblr, etc., etc.  I fell, as it were, "off the grid."

I've only just gone back to work and only now has my complexion recovered sufficiently as to not put customers in mind of medieval history and or boiled hotdogs (ick) and so to my bench and up tools.

Now, when this sort of thing happens, one is reminded first of the imminent mortality that stalks us all -- as Anne Carson has Euripides say:

"Now every mortal has pain
and sweat is constant,
but if there is anything dearer than being alive,
it's dark to me."

Glad to be alive then.

Then, comes the unhappy business of catching up.  That task in mind, I will ease into it as best I can.  Perhaps just a few doodles from the bookstore, something light, if no one minds. (And who's to mind?)

Frogs then.  And toads.  And make the best of bad weather.