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August 20, 2005

everybody's a critic

"Mom, your breath smells like dead people," says Herself, wrinkling her nose. "It's like your mouth has b.o.," says Moo helpfully.

"I can't wait for this week to end," says my doctor. "Everybody is sick! And," she adds, in a confidential tone, "it goes straight to their lungs." When she listens to my chest, though, I don't think she hears anything interesting. All the interesting stuff, in fact, is up in my head: the green stuff, the raspy voice, the headache. She gives me a prescription and I go home, feeling sick now that I know I actually am sick. You know how that goes, right?

In the middle of the night I wake myself up, coughing, and go downstairs and watch television with Moo. We watch the last two episodes of the third season of "Six Feet Under," and during one of them we hear something on the upstairs deck. We creep up and turn on the light and there in the recycling bin is an adolescent raccoon, completely unafraid but blinking at us curiously. He retreats to the railing, walks along the outside of the deck and comes back in to look at us some more. Spike curls up at the window and looks, too. We all do this until we get tired of it, and then the raccoon leaves and Moo, Spike and I go back downstairs.

It is hot here today but the air is much more breathable than it was while we were in Connecticut, and Moo and Herself and A. and C. swim in the lake this afternoon while I sit in my usual spot on the dock, drink a margarita, and listen to them talk. Lakes smell so much different than salt water does--I miss the salt water smell and the noise the surf makes when it comes onto the shore, though what I like about the lake is that when there's nobody on it I can pretend that it's mine, all mine.

"The stuff we talk about sounds a lot funnier in your blog," C. says to me while we eat a pizza upstairs in the kitchen for dinner. "And I think the song-lyric blogs are boring, too."

Posted by JudyLa at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)