"HALF A PERSON"

I am so stubborn. Stress, travel, schlepping, scurrying around, getting, say, the finishing editorial touches on a novel (or any combination thereof) as we all know, wears the immune system thin, making us susceptible to whatever. So, Sunday evening, I felt a little spacey and crabby and run down but did I stop and rest and take good care? Not really. I hid behind the proud shield of denial and declared that, I, Amy Guth, do not Get Sick. Tuesday night, I was sick. Awesome. So, it is now Friday, and I am on my fourth day of laying around, which as any of you who know me well can attest, makes me crazy.

It isn't the rest part that makes me crazy, as I do keep Shabbes, as most of you know. It's the not-productive-during-a-perfectly-good-workday feeling that makes me crazy. It's so hard for me to just turn my mind to standby and just chill on a non-Shabbes day. On Shabbes, I've taught myself to nefesh, to just be, to bask in re-ensoulment, if you will, but the rest of the week, in my mind, is to work, for crying out loud.

Oh, the cries of a desperate women falling into the depths of boredom. Clearly, I am going stir-crazy as is evident in the photo above of refrigerator magnets. Lather his produce? What has my fridge come to?

But, this downtime, has, at least, allowed me to catch up on some reading. I read David Gianastasio's Swift Kicks (also published by So New Media Books), Consumed: Women on Excess (ditto), by several talented women, re-read Slaughterhouse-5, mainly just for the part about the promise made to the war buddy's wife, to write mindfully of a children's crusade of sorts, and now I am halfway into Jewish With Feeling, which I am really enjoying a lot. What a ballsy and interesting book!

I realize, also, that I must repaint my ceiling immediately. Well, as soon as I feel well enough to do it. See? I'm driving myself crazy being sick.

I also have enjoyed many weird fever dreams, more recently that a friend was simultaneously conducting an orchestra and leading a Torah service, and another that involved skiing, almost flying, down a steep hill that seemed to never end, but watching the sky turn colors and suddenly realizing I was wearing marshmallows and going crazy to find out if the marshmallows were vegetarian or not. Oh boy. Fever is great.

Time to hook myself up with a little refuah sh'leimah, me thinks.