A good friend is planning on getting married in Durham, NC this coming June.  She mentioned it to me and I mentioned it to Jeremy and then said, you know maybe we could take a couple weeks and go for a road trip?

And then didn’t say anything else.  Because you don’t wanna play all your cards at once, you know?  First you lay down an interesting one and then you wait, just a little.

So I came home from work last night and said, ‘You know, if we were to do a road trip this summer, maybe we could go to Nashville.’

And I knew I was on to a winner when he said, ‘Yeah I was thinking the same thing, and maybe New Orleans too.’

And then I was like, ‘Dollywood?  I’ve never been to Dollywood, and that’s just wrong.  We’d probably have to pack some granola bars for you though, I don’t think they cater to vegetarians at Dollywood.’

And while he wasn’t as excited as I was about Dollywood there was still a glimmer of interest.  So where else should we go?  I haven’t seen a whole lot of the south save for a trip to South Carolina when I was a kid and a bus ride to Florida with the BRMM in 1995.  Any William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor themed sites I should know about?  And Harper Lee, I know she’s a recluse, but she’d want to meet me wouldn’t she?  Where’s she live? 

My mother says, based on a short message I left on her very old answering machine, that I sound like I have pneumonia.  Rest easy, dear reader(s) and Mom, I do not have pneumonia.  Just the tail end of the flu, which in Carolyn terms, mean I have a cough that sounds like my lungs are trying to forcibly remove themselves from my body.  This is the same cough I get every year after I get either the flu or a bad cold. Sometimes I get it twice a year.  I have only once had pneumonia when I was 3.  Bronchitis is another story all together, but I think I have managed to avoid it this time (knock wood, cross fingers, etc).

Despite feeling better than I had all week, I stayed in again this weekend and dosed up on lots of hot tea and cough syrup and soup.  Much of my time was spent threatening to infect Jeremy whenever he was a jerk (which, sadly, was often) and watching the X Factor and complaining about that miserable Simon Cowell not voting off the equally miserable John and Edward (if you don’t know who they are, well then you should count each of your lucky stars).

I considered trying to fake sick today but I didn’t think my boss would buy a diagnosis of pneumonia on the basis of sounding terrible on an answering machine on another continent as a legitimate excuse.

So this morning I woke up without a sore throat or a fever so I got myself up, put on my work clothes and came into the office.  Possibly I could use about 10 more hours of sleep but that doesn’t seem to be on the cards for me today.  Instead I have some Vicks Sinex Micromist and some Benylin Cough Syrup at my desk and am making the best of it in fine British tradition.  My chin is up, I am keeping calm and carrying on.  Unfortunately, even though I am essentially well I still have a vicious cough (the same one I get every year after getting sick) and according to one of my corworkers I sound like Lindsay Lohan (she doesn’t get why I don’t see this as a compliment).  So everyone still thinks I have the plague full on.

At least I’m off the LemSip.  That stuff is grody.

In happier news, tomorrow is my brother’s birthday.  He is still older than me.  Four whole years older than me.  So, on the off chance that he clicks on this link via the Facebook I would like to wish him a very happy birthday.

So, happy birthday Andy, I hope you have a very nice day.

Yes it's a Christmas picture but it's all I could come up with in a short amounth of time.

Sickness.  I have had a flu shot, so why do I appear to have the flu?  Not fair.

If you need me today, well, that’s tough luck.  I’ll be in bed.

In honor of Hallowe’en I would like to offer you the following list of things that scare me.  Please do not use this list in order to inflict emotional torture on me, that would be an abuse of the unspoken trust we bestow upon each other as users of the internet

Things that scare me (in no particular order)

1. The old HBO theme music – when I was a kid I used to go over to my friend Amy’s and we would sleep on the sofa bed in her living room.  Late at night after we were supposed to be asleep we would turn on HBO to watch whatever forbidden movie (almost always The Blue Lagoon) happened to be on with the sound turned low.  No matter how quiet we tried to be the HBO theme music at the beginning of each new movie would blare and make us jump.  As a result, I still flinch whenever I hear this music.
2. The theme form the Exorcist – I have never seen, nor do I intend to ever see, The Exorcist.  I do know, however, that this music is creepy. This was the sign off music for the college radio station, WSGR,  in Port Huron.   I would always stay up late reading books by Christopher Pike and listening to said radio station.  WSGR would sign off at different times each night because they couldn’t always get people to stay really late therefore this horrible creepy song would waft out of my radio at random hours, usually while I was reading some horrible gruesome portion of whatever book I was reading.  Later I became a DJ on WSGR realising an adolescent dream, and was given the 12am – whenever slot on Saturdays.  I loved it because I could get away with playing just about anything I wanted, but I also hated it because it meant having to play that horrible sign off music in the deserted basement of the deserted library in the wee small hours of the morning. 
3. Spiders – My dad hates spiders, I hate spiders, sadly Jeremy is more scared of them than I am so I can’t girl out about it and refuse to kill them.  This means I must confront this fear on a regular and horrifying basis.
4. Hannibal Lector – When I was 15 I read Silence of the Lambs thinking if I read it I would be able to watch it.  So I read the stupid book (as loaned to me by the boy I had a massive crush on) and then I watched the stupid movie with my friends.  I still have nightmares about stupid Hannibal Lector.
5. All scary movies – See number 4.  I am clearly not cut out for scary movies.  Gremlins gave me nightmares for Christ’s sake!  I watched the Blair Witch Project on one of my early dates with Jeremy and was then forced to take many, many precautions in order to turn on my basement light and do laundry at the house where I was living because I was half convinced the Blair Witch had moved to Hamtramck.
6. Psycho Killers – Just you know, in general, because they are everywhere.  They are quiet and keep to themselves so you don’t notice them until it’s too late.
7. Teenagers on the bus – They are loud and mean and they listen to horrible music.  They could turn at any moment.
8. Earwigs and Cockroaches – They are disgusting and gross me out.  Especially the mommoth cockroach that crawled onto my leg in Palermo
9. Sicillian taxi drivers – There should be a horror movie (that  I would not watch) about them

As of today, it has been five months since I have touched a cigraette.  Wait.  I take that back.  There was one night when I held on to an unlit cigarette just to let my hands have the sensation. I did not light it, I did not smoke it, but I did touch it.  Except for that, I have not touched a cigarette in five months.  I have attended parties and gone dancing and hung out at the pub, but have not bummed a single, solitary social cigarette in all that time.

Five months, in case you weren’t aware, is very close to six months.  And six months is half a year.  Half a year, I tell myself, might as well be a whole year.

It’s not that I was smoking heavily, not all the time, just when particularly stressed out or particularly tipsy, but it was still bad for me.  It made me cough and exacerbated my already sickly nature.  I still miss them.  I liked smoking.  I liked the break from the day it gave me, I liked the chance it gave me to just think quietly, I liked the instant comraderie it gave me with other smokers. 

But I am better for not doing it anymore.  My health is better, my teeth are better, my sense of smell is shockingly better.  So there you are.  Five months done.  Be proud of me.

I know it is Autumn and this poem is about the spring, but I thought of it today while I was walking across the park to my bus stop.  I think because the trees were bright reds and golds and that made me think about William Blake seeing angels (which he did in the park I was crossing) and then I thought of this because it is a poem that I love and it talks about trees in full colour.  Even if Williams is talking about the colour of the flowers rather than their last days before winter.

Anyhow, I love this poem even though (or maybe because) it always makes me sad. 

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime – William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

A new book has been covered at 365 Days of Heaving Bosoms.

Coming soon, a pirate book.

Avast.

Today someone found this very site with the following search terms:

is he a reliable narrator – on the road

Here’s a little free help for you, friend.

Oh my god, dude, no, he’s not.  He’s drunk for, like, the whole book.  Probably high too.  Sal Paradise is maybe the least reliable narrator ever.  Happily this does not stop him from being entertaining and insightful and saying many beautiful things.  His lack of reliability is all part of the fun.  Now get off the internet and go climb a mountain, or steal some groceries or meet a girl on the bus.  Stop worrying about books and live life.

Wow!

I was looking at Sweet Juniper to see if he had posted any new street urchins and that lead to the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier at that first link above. 

Look at it.  It’s so very worth it.  Some of these have made me lose my breath.  I absolutely can not wait to see more.