Sick & Tired

I have a cold. I'm a pretty cranky person when I'm not sick, so you can imagine what I'm like when I'm sick.

My idea of fun, a couple of years ago, was to call my friends up and yell "F$#% You!" into the phone and hang up. I have no idea why that struck me as funny [actually, I do have an idea. It has to do with rebelling against every meaningless social nicety.]

I am really tired of Thai food lately. It just seems like a sweet, gooey mess to me. A fraud of a cuisine, as it were. I would like to eat steaks and vegetables and rice for about a year. Food that is the equivalent of what David Mamet called the crewcut: honest.

I want to compile a list of all the sayings [her idiomatic speech] of my late mother, Pat. It's odd how I miss her, and how I don't miss her ... what is odd is that so much of her spirit and idiosyncracies inform my own, so I am her more than I would like to be. It is like she will not leave me alone.

She would say the following to me and my siblings:

• "Can you keep it down to a dull roar? I cannot hear myself think."


• "Immediately, if not sooner!"


• She would use the word "skiwumpus" when things were out of order

During the mood ring fad of the mid-seventies, she thought it would be a good idea if everyone wore some type of readily visible mood indicator, so that everyone could see what mood you were in.

When I was in college, I would come home and play Yachtzee with her and have lunch. Probably some of the best times I had in my life.