What do you know - she didn't make it up.

Growing up, Mother used many words and phrases which I considered outlandish or comical. One such word was "epizootic." She actually always said "the epizootic." I never knew what the term meant. I figured it was something she made up. She made it sound as if it was the most terrible, awful illness ever. And, indeed it was.

Mother would say it with a stuffy nose: "I dat da epazhootic." I didn't know what it was or where the word came from, but I grew up terrified of it. And with good reason. I've had the epizootic and lived to tell the tale. By saying that, I mean I've had something terrible and awful. Now, Doug is afraid he is coming down with it.

I said "Please don't."

He said "oh, o.k., just because you said please."

Fever dreams

I've been sick for days. Since last Saturday. I went to the see doc Sue yesterday (that trip about killed me) and she informed me that I have "the influenza." "And I didn't get a flu shot." I said.

"There are so many strains who knows which one you would get anyway?" she replied.

Influenza is a killer. I've had fever, (day four and I still have a fever) aches, pain, chilling, the cough of death and exhaustion. She put me on a z-pak and gave me cough syrup with codeine for the cough. (Oh yeah, come to Mama.)

In the midst of all of this, I've had some crazy fever dreams. In one there were white birds hovering around - which I believe represents angels. I told Doug that we'll have to tell his mother that the angels were taking care of me.

In another, I was having these crazy dreams about my Lil Green Patch- which is a game I play on facebook. I even thought up a couple of new gifts that you could give to others- one was a bee to pollinate the garden. Another, was a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly.

Which just goes to show that some of the best ideas are born out of fever dreams.

On writing.

Recently, when I referred a friend to my blog, she said "how do you find the time?

My response to that would be "you find the time to do what it is that you want to do."

Which is absolutely true, but I'm also an empty-nester. I've been through the years of frantically getting up, getting myself ready for work, getting them to school, getting me to work, only to repeat the cycle at 5P. Then, if I wanted to paint my nails or read a magazine, I stayed up too late to do so. Now, I have oodles of time to garden, play with my puprs, read, craft, indulge in moi.

At an early age, I watched The Dick Van Dyke show.

I watched Dick, Buddy and Sally write in a team environment.

It looked like a lot of fun. I couldn't have been very old. I just googled it and the show ran from 1961 to 1966. I was ten in '68, so maybe I watched re-runs? Nonetheless, I have to believe that watching this show influenced me, greatly.

For three years in my early thirties, I wrote a column for a local paper. Then, I went back to college to finish my undergrad. Everyone assumed that I wanted to study journalism. Not me. For journalists, less is more. For English majors, more is more. Journalists report just the facts, folks. English majors embellish. I was born to embellish.

I've always believed that as a writer, either you have it or you don't. For the most part, it is a yearning from within to express oneself. For me, it lends a balance to this madness called life. I remember watching Doogie Howser, M.D., the father of all bloggers. That was the back in the day when the cursor was a white rectangle that blinked and sat there staring at you, screaming, asking "what are you going to say next?" Even back then, I wanted to blog.

Are writers reporters, prophets, crazies, entertainers, preachers, judges, what? Who appoints them as mouthpieces? If they appoint themselves, as they clearly do, how valid is the commission? If Time alone makes masterpieces, as Anatole France thought, then great writing is just trial and error tested by time, and if it's that, then above all it has to be free, it has to flow from the gift, not the outside pressures. The gift is its own justification, and there is no way of telling for sure, short of the appeal to posterity, whether it's really worth something or whether it's only the ephemeral expression of a fad or tendency, the articulation of a stereotype. Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety.

My friend also commented that she didn't know if her life was interesting enough to write about. I feel it is my obligation to others - to my friends, my parents, my colleagues, my children, my partner, to MYSELF to be interesting. To at least try to make myself interesting in this dogmatic, boring everyday day-in, day-out existence of ours. If and when I cease to be interesting or cease to seek out those things that cause me to grow and stretch my limbs, then damn me. When my brain dries up and I begin to constantly repeat myself or can't remember what it was that you said five minutes ago, then shoot me and put me out of my misery.