Groan

Well, good morning. It's four a.m. and I'm up and about, eating cereal and wishing I could sleep. I finally gave up on trying after lying in bed awake for over an hour, listening to my lungs rattle and gurgle and feeling like there was a small child sitting on my chest. I am tired of being sick. At this moment, I feel like calling my doctor and telling him to put me in the hospital, to do ANYTHING so I can start feeling better. Sheesh. I will call in a few hours, and see what happens from there. Heck of a way to start off a post, huh?

Two thoughts occurred to me (well, quite a few more have, but only these two are civil and worth writing down) as I sit here in my zombie-like state. I already told you about K's visit yesterday, and how much it cheered me up. I didn't mention one other thing that he did that made me happy. At one point while he was here I felt really guilty because I honestly don’t have money to spend on ANYthing, and so K bought me a mocha at the coffee shop. We then walked a block to this amazing used book store by my house and I proceeded to buy myself a $4 copy of ”The Philosopher’s Stone” by Colin Wilson. This is where the guilt set in--I told K that I felt like I had swindled him into buying me coffee when I seemed to be perfectly able to spend money at the bookstore. He would have none of it. He told me it was okay; after all, “This is a BOOK we’re talking about!” What a great man. He is right--there should always be money for books, even when you can’t afford to feed yourself.

The other thought occurred to me just a few minutes ago, while I was sitting here at the desk munching on my peanut butter Panda Puffs (hey kids--they're organic!). I was eating out of one of my mom's old Corelle bowls. This is all well and good, except that I noticed that it just didn't seem to taste as good as usual. Aside from the early hour, it is the bowl. Just the other day I broke my favorite bowl--it was a beautiful all-black small stoneware bowl that a dear friend of mine had thrown himself on his pottery wheel. I had been eating out of that bowl for years and years. It was the one I ate from nearly exclusively--if I had used it and it was still dirty when I wanted to eat again, I would wash it out rather than get another bowl. I ate everything out of that bowl. If someone else happened to use it, which was rare, I felt startled and violated. I was very attached to that bowl. I know, it is just a thing, but it is a thing infused with a lot of sentimental value for me. An object which has been created by the hands of a good friend is priceless. And somehow, my food just doesn't taste as good eaten from a plain white porcelain bowl as it did from that little black vision of pockmarked glossy beauty.