Ezekiel's Bones

Background music: "Dem Bones" by James Weldon Johnson.

I'm not really cranky, but I am really sick--yes, I caught my husband's cold/flu ickiness--so it's a Cranky Doodle Day in the blog. It also helps explain the recent weepiness as sickness was coming on. And it's a Random Coinciday, too, because my last blog post was Bittersweet, and that's the title of the most recent book by Colleen McCollough, who just died and got a shamefully weird obituary that her fans are currently mocking.

It contained this actual sentence: "Plain of feature and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless [sic] a woman of wit and warmth." (Perhaps Australians leave out that expected comma after the "nevertheless." Nevertheless, I had the urge to say "sic.") (Them bones, them bones, them wry bones...) Consequently, other authors are writing their own silly, personal mock obits in response.

Here's mine: "Kathleen, holier than thou, who just wouldn't dye her hair, still managed to write a few good poems."

It pains me, actually, to type that--literally because I started coughing in the middle of it, which hurt, and figuratively (and superstitiously) because I have to stay alive for another 21 days, at least, thanks to the Internet Death Quiz, before I can rest easy....

I've lost 3 pounds in 3 days, from not eating, not a diet I'd recommend, even for the "certainly overweight" Colleen McCullough, not because I have the gastrointestinal "flu" but because, in my case, the upper respiratory case, the lung bone's connected to the stomach bone, and coughing is a general disaster. I do like chicken soup and carbonated beverages.

There are a jillion books titled Bittersweet, and none of them are on my bookshelf. The closest is Eros the Bittersweet, by Anne Carson, and I'm still on page 108 (the perfect number!) of that. But these are all versions of McCullough's Bittersweet. I'm liking the audio book because of the sympathetic and handy nurse, and I love the teal cap, and how about that politically incorrect fur collar?