I promise to never take good health for granted again...

Life has ground down to a sort of time warped, slow motion, suspended animation existence. Nothing exciting is happening, and each day is eerily similar to the last. I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything...which isn't exactly true because I did actually paint the bathroom last week. ( Pictures to follow when all the cleanup and touch ups and re-installations are accomplished.)

But I think this feeling of deadening inertia is mostly due to the fact that I've been sick for the last couple of weeks. There's nothing like sickness to reduce one's motivations and ambitions. Actually, I think it's more like I just never fully recovered from being sick when I got back from England. I thought I was getting better but then I had a relapse. This is not just a cold- this is a cold on steroids. This is a cold that reduces you to a lower life form. This is a cold that wound up in Brad's system, and Grandpa's. This is a cold that turned into a cough that has shaken me to the core. I don't think I have ever had a cough this bad before in my life. I have had coughing fits so severe that I end up doubled over, gasping for breath, with tears streaming from my eyes. It was pretty pathetic; we both coughed at night waking the other one up and I don't think either one of us has had a normal night's sleep in many a day. I have drunk enough cough syrup- the normal buzzy kind AND a strange homeopathic kind- and ingested enough lozenges and cough drops to fill a small warehouse. Not to mention all the normal things like Vitamin C and echinacea... When I laughed I sounded like Marilla sometimes.

But, thanks be to God, we are all on the mend at last.

I set up the Christmas tree yesterday. I waited a little longer than normal because I wasn't sure what Stanne's reaction would be, and sure enough, he is completely and unhealthily enthralled with it. The squirt bottle is being used a lot to keep him from eating too much of the tree. ( We have the fake kind.) I made sure to fasten the ornaments as securely as I could and left them off the lower branches. I found him half way up the tree this afternoon, lounging in the branches like some sort of wild cougar. I didn't know whether to shoo him off or take pictures. So, I did both- well, first I took a couple pictures, and then he caught sight of the camera strap and came down to attack that.

I guess we won't be putting our Christmas presents under the tree anytime soon.