I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s this year pretty much in bed.  I woke up two days after Christmas with a bad bug and spent the next few days either in bed sleeping or in the bathroom being sick.  The first time I can ever remember being sick like that was when I was in the third or fourth grade and we lived in New York.  I just remember being so sick that I could barely get out of bed, and had to eventually end up sleeping on the thin box-spring or platform that are made for bunk beds.  Three decades later and I can still remember how uncomfortable it was, and the delirium and strange dreams that always accompany these kinds of sicknesses.  It seems like those dreams are the strangest when you lay their watching television, so this time at least I made sure it didn’t come on until the intensity of the bug had passed.  Either way, it seemed like an almost prophetic way to end 2011.

“I am sick, discontented, and out of humor. Poor food, hard lodging, cold weather, fatigue, nasty clothes, nasty cookery, vomit half my time, smoked out my senses – the Devil’s in it; I can’t Endure it.  Why are we sent here to starve and freeze?  What sweet felicities have I left at home: a charming wife, pretty children, good beds, good food, good cookery – all agreeable, all harmonious. Here all confusion, smoke and cold, hunger and filthiness…” – Surgeon Albigence Waldo, Valley Forge, December 14, 1777 Continue reading →