Damn damn damn

I have a cold sore on my chin. I haven't had one of those in such a long time, I almost forgot how much fun they are. It starts out feeling like maybe I'm getting a pimple, but it never blossoms into a pimple. Instead, it just hurts and kind of itches, like something is under my skin that can't get out. And indeed, it's a blister. Luckily, I have Abreva, which I keep around just in case this happens. Now at least I know that my stiffness and achiness isn't just something in my head. I must have had a virus. At least the cold sore means that the virus has run its course. The interesting thing about being a parent of young children is that initially, you catch everything they bring home, and usually you suffer far more than them with whatever it is. But as time goes by, you never really catch the full-blown version anymore. You get these low-grade symptoms, which makes it harder to pinpoint what you have. I mean, you could be harboring strep for weeks before you think to get it checked out. So, the nice thing is that you don't get laid up with colds (flus are new every year, so you're never really immune, unfortunately) much anymore. But the bad thing is that you sometimes struggle with feeling not quite right for a week or two (10 days is the average full course of a cold and its resulting post-viral fatigue, I'm told) and you can't "blame" it on being sick or take a sick day and snuggle in with chicken soup and the remote.

Oh, and I have to recommend a chick-lite book I finished in one day recently. I normally despise chick lit, especially when it borders on chick-lite. But I was getting on the plane from Estes Park and I was tired of reading about Nicole Richie's anorexia denials, Anna Nicole's birth/death/wedding antics, and Jessica Simpson's metamorphosis into Coutrney Love even as her sister morphs into Drew Barrymore on Clenbuterol. The book is Emily Griffin's Something Blue, which is a follow-up to her earlier Something Borrowed, which I have not read, but which I understand to be the same story told from a different viewpoint. Cool, eh? Every story has three sides, yours, mine and the truth. In Something Blue, Griffin paints a sometimes painful, but always readable, portrait of a Darcy, a total bitch who has never taken a good look at her really awful behavior until said behavior finally results in consequences that cannot be rationalized or denied away. Darcy is like the Jerry Maguire of the chick-lit(e) genre, making an actual and a metaphorical journey towards the decent human being that underlies the awful (although gorgeous) exterior. The story is entirely plausible, complete with parents whose own behavior and communicated attitudes had to have contributed to their daughter becoming a shallow-masked bitch and enabling friends and lovers who seem to enjoy Darcy's zippy, confident energy enough to overlook most of the narcissistic behavior. Until they can't.

Anyway, I know that many of my readers read far more intellectual fare. But this is a good four to six hour read for when you don't want to exercise your brain too heavily (although the characters are shaded in ways that make for interesting character analysis).

It's Columbus Day. Must go do kid things now.

YC