Remember when I said I was going to list the books I've read and merely yay or nay them? Me neither, obviously. The most I can remember are these: Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg. No. Don't do it! Don't even touch it! It's one more whining book about one more kid raised really badly by someone who's not as famous as the kid thinks she is. The dad always leaves -- that's apparently one of the joys of fatherhood -- so Mom gets all the blame, which, in this case, she surely deserves. I fell for the hype on the cover: Compulsively readable ... fluently written ... raw and searing. Yah. None of the above.
But Wally Lamb with The Hour I First Believed. Yep. It wasn't as good as his others, but that still leaves it as very, very good.
The one I finished yesterday: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost. I liked it a lot and will buy his other books. These are travel books, non-fiction, but he's funny and interesting.
I'm only awake right now because I have to go to the Wednesday Midday Market. But I have a cold and I only want to stumble from bed to computer and back all day, clutching my box of Kleenex and swirling a medicine-covered cotton swab into my nostrils every four hours. That's Zicam: Get over your cold faster (registered trademark). It's homeopathic and reduces the duration and severity of cold symptoms, and that's true.
Instead, I'll be unloading and loading my car and setting things up and longing for home with its bathroom with soap (unlike the bathroom at Williams Park), longing for tea (even though I'll actually drink coffee), longing for Lipton's Chicken Noodle Soup to soothe my throat and give me salt. I always want salt during a cold, even a cold with reduced duration and severity.
I lied about the Kleenex. It's really Puffs Plus. I remember when Puffs first came out. There was a sample box of them in our mailbox in Silver Springs, New York. We all had to walk down to the post office and remember the combination in order to retrieve our mail. I was surprised and delighted to move to the Big City and see that they'd deliver mail right to your house.
Anyway, I pulled out a tissue and powder spurted all over the place. I was disgusted. It was a couple of decades before I'd use Puffs again, which was a last resort. Now I'm a convert and, apparently, a missionary.
I have no doubt that in my lifetime the cure for the cold will be found. In the meantime, though, feel free to leave a comment, telling us about your favorite cold treatments. I mean, it's Christmas. I don't want to miss anything just because I have a cold!
When I went to take a picture of some books, I found that I still had unprocessed photos of those disastrous gingerbread camels. Take a look at the big bowl of ingredients and see if you can identify the four spices on top. I know. That's a lot of work for people on Christmas vacation, isn't it? (1) Give me your cold remedy. (b) Identify spices. Well, I'm sorry, but this whole blogging thing isn't just about me, you know. There has to be input! And that's your job.
Jeeze.
4 comments:
brown sugar, fresh ground coffee, fresh ground ginger, & cinnamon.
(the cannibals will be left wanting with this recipe)
COLDS: I handle colds as I handle ALL my discomforts in life "Ignore it, and it will go away". I recommend this method to absolutely NO ONE.
SPICES: I'll guess: Ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS: Other than the insane man on S. Oakdale Street, the best X-mas lights I have seen this year are at 3471 50th Ave. N., just west of 34th St./US 19...and if you can't get out to see them, just watch them from the comfort of home with some chicken soup, Barbara, and Happy Holidays to you!
http://www.stpetechristmas.com/video.htm
Ginger, allspice, cocoa(??), and yes, hmm, ground coffee in the shape of an angel! That'd be my guess.
Ah, for a cold remedy I asked my Human A&P professor and she recommended Mucinex DM, Zinc, and Astragalus. The ER doctors I saw for breathing treatments with my last cold also were big fans of Mucinex DM and zinc.
Mostly, I hunker down with tissues, tea, soup, crackers, and cats (which I don't consume or blow my nose on, but yay for snuggly, warm cats), and indeed, I figure if I ignore it (the cold)it'll go away.
Okay, and I've been ignoring back pain for years and it hasn't gone away, but I think the trick is to ignore it anyway and that keeps one from dwelling on the ickyness of it. Plus, if you can sleep through whatever ails ya, ignoring it is much easier.
Ooh, I see it's time for the SPCA to be open, if they are in fact open today...and if they are, I shall herd up the new kittens and their momma and take them in for adoptive purposes. Precious little beans. I'll miss them so much! Maybe the SPCA isn't open today. Hmm, which do I prefer??
Ah, if only I had a rural farm and could keep all of these little kitties!!
Merry Christmas Eve to you, dear Barbara, and to all a good night!
Mister Google was being naughty, not nice, when Eunice tried to post this comment, so I copied and pasted it here and now:
I'm grateful to the manufacturer of Puffs for continuing to produce tissues in a box designed for grabbing a handful instead of one at a time; I like to fold about a half dozen for my pants pocket, to be used as needed. (And no, I can't use the pocket size packages; did you ever try to pull out a single tissue from one of them? I always tear them on the way out.)
I used to be a loyal user of Scotties, until they went the way of Kleenex and restricted me to the one-at-a-time routine. If Puffs succumbs to the same process, I'll need to resort to taking out one tissue at a time, folding it in half, piling a half dozen of them neatly, and folding them to fit in my pocket--a waste of valuable time. (Let's see, 15 seconds times [maybe] 4 times a week times 52 weeks: that's almost a whole hour lost in a year, just because they quit packaging tissues conveniently for pocket (or purse). Grump!
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