Writings, Revelations, and Other Nonsense

Here I post a daily diary entry from my grandmother, Maggie, who lived on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, in 1937, and a blog entry from yours truly, who lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010.

What Was Grandma Maggie Doing On February 2, 1937 on Saint Mark’s Place in Manhattan?????

She was having her baby!!!  Happy happy day!!! Grandma finally had her baby.  On this day, February 2 in 1937, Timothy Duffield was born.

Did you know, then, Grandma who you had in your arms?  My uncle Tee! Curly-haired brown-eyed sailor boy all the girls loved. Mischievous, charismatic (in a quiet way), who seemed to have talent with everything he tried.  Straight A student at Rye High School, graduate of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, bright young star at JC Penney, lived in a first floor apartment with a fireplace in Chelsea, Manhattan, read every book anyone ever put in front of him, seemed to know a little or a lot of each question you asked, and when in doubt, faked it beautifully. Uncle T, a man of few words until he storytold, and then could do so for hours with a touch of the savant, learned to upholster furniture for the hell of it, owned an antique custom wood boat with his best friend Asa. Tee, the father of two girls and a bachelor for years after his divorce, knew every pizza parlor and bar of New York from the meat packing district to the edge of Harlem, but favored best the Cornelia Street Café. Uncle Tee who my mother, Kasha adored, and he back, who came by train to Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas Eve at our house when I was a little girl, and sat like a sentry with an amused smile on his face and ate with relish everything on his plate but the vegetables. Uncle Tee curious and not afraid of the world, hired a limo when my mother and I flew to see him one Christmas.  Uncle Tee the first person I knew to own a computer, who saved all my letters and emails because he said one day I would be a writer, died of a heart attack when I was 28, died owning three apartments in New York, a house in Dallas near the JC Penney headquarters and a time share in Hawaii. At his funeral friends who had known him for 60 years would speak.  My family would huddle in a fierce winter wind and throw his ashes off the rocks of Sachem’s Head, where as a little boy he used to swim and sail and run along the seaweed, calling to his mother, my grandma, so he could show her the shine in the shells he’d found.

But grandma doesn’t know that yet. She knows only that she is a young woman with her very first baby, a little boy, born healthy on February 2d, a few days past his due date. And now she has three long weeks to rest. Which we will let her do, not bothering her at all until she emerges again and tells us what it is like to have a new baby boy on Saint Mark’s Place in Manhattan, 1937.

Until then we are grateful for our guest bloggers. Every single submission coming in is fascinating and fabulous and different from the next. We have novelists and puppeteers and poets and we have grandmas that will absolutely make your headspin they are so magnificent. Stay tuned everyone…  And if you are a guest blogger who would like to tell us about your grandmother, write me and let me know!

Here I post a daily diary entry from my grandmother, Maggie, who lived on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, in 1937, and a blog entry from yours truly, who lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010.

What Was My Grandma Maggie Doing On Saint Mark’s Place, February 1, 1937

Rained all day yesterday; we read— I in Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley, powerful book, full of hate and very interesting.  To *Luchow’s for knackwurst. M. beer and I wine, and home and the Talleys in for bridge, and we had luck for once sufficient to counteract their better playing.  Feel fine and Grace says might as well resign myself for another ten days.  Walk and read and talked to Anne Wolfe, who had been to Harlem Sat. night and horrified because negro at *Savoy Dance Hall asked her to dance.

*Lüchow’s opened when Union Square was New York’s theater and music hall district. It had seven separate dining rooms, a beer garden, a bar, and a men’s grill. One room was lined with animal heads; another displayed a collection of beer steins. When the city’s fortunes turned in the 1970s, the restaurant shut its doors for good after a mysterious 1982 fire. It’s now the site of a New York University dormitory.(from ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com)

*The Savoy was a popular dance venue from the late 1920s to the 1950s and many dances such as Lindy Hop became famous here. It was known downtown as the “Home of Happy Feet” but uptown, in Harlem, as “the Track”. Unlike the ‘whites only’ policy of the Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom was integrated where white and black Americans danced together. Virtuosic dancers, however, excluded others from the northeast corner of the dance floor, now referred to as the “Cat’s Corner,” a term not used at the time.(from wikipedia)

And what was her granddaughter doing on February 1st, 2010 in Brattleboro, Vermont?

Well, thank goodness we are still reading Daughter of the Earth, a depressing book true, but a must. Or so Alice Walker says in her intro to the reprint.  But thank goodness times have changed at the Savoy Dance Hall, which I think is called The Savoy Ballroom, but I would never argue with my grandma.

Ten more days? Can we wait that long? And all around us people are popping out babies or full of them.  I was in the produce section Sunday and saw Leah, looking very beautiful and rosy-cheeked with Max, sleeping peacefully on her chest.  He’s a true Brattleboro-ite: happiest at the Co-op. And at the cheese counter I saw Re, one of my dearest  friends, who I haven’t seen in absolutely ages, and when she turned around with her full moon belly, and my eyes popped out of my head, she said,  Twins.  Girls!! With her little Finnegan at home, she’ll have to get a mini-van or at least one of those motorcycles with a sidecar. For three.  I told her she could drop them all off with me when she felt a wee bit insane. Of course, she was born to be a mother and will probably never feel insane.  And then there’s my grandma. We are waiting with baited breath, boy or girl. And more importantly, when.

And while we wait, Evie Lovett and I are busy preparing for the Four Days show at Vermont Center for Photography.  We are doing last minute edits on my text (Evie very good copyeditor not for hire), font-size and mounting and meeting at the gallery to hang and so on and so forth.  Of course, Evie does absolutely everything, she is interminably organized, and I flail along behind her, trying to pick up the pieces that she never drops.  So anyway, don’t forget to come. We might have a  snow storm, in which case we can all just cozy in at the gallery, gazing at Evie’s gorgeous photography and imagining we are all in Montana, at the beginning of July, the hot sun rising over the Blackfeet reservation, and picture book clouds floating over the continental divide, the air smells of cotton candy and sage grass, and we are listening to the drums and watching the fancy dancers, with their bells and beads and feathers, dancing so beautifully.

Come one come all, The Vermont Center for Photography, Flat Street, Brattleboro, Vermont, Opening: Friday, February 5, 2010, 5-8 pm.

And maybe by then, Maggie will have her baby!

Here I post a daily diary entry from my grandmother, Maggie, who lived on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, in 1937, and a blog entry from yours truly, who lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010.

What Has My Grandma, Maggie, Been  Doing these Last Few Days????

January 29^{th, 1937}

This mythical date which we have bandied about for so long came and went and nothing happened. Took a walk, bought case of 88cent wine, enjoyed the sunshine and mild crispness of 39-degree day, home and read In Sweden: the Middle Way about consumers cooperatives.  Just as M. came home, Fritz and Kate turned up with sweet little bassinet like a large silk-lined market basket, a pair of baby scales and a bottle sterilizer which Florence Reback is lending us.  M. told them Jimmy watched little John being born, and they reacted with horror, told him he wouldn’t want to—couldn’t make out whether he secretly thought would or wouldn’t. Thanked Florence, had clam chowder, gave M. shot in arm. He said Joe Barnes now convinced Soviet Trial on up and up because Duranty is, also a Col. Hugh Cooper who has been in Russia as an engineer and said there had been evidences of sabotage which he had seen, but he had not considered possibility of its being due to conspiracy etc… Recommended article in new tabloid-sized American Mercury on Russian ideas of justice which different from ours.  Dorothy Ducas called up, apparently had a hunch we would be at hospital and disappointed to find us both here. Resignedly to bed.

January 30, 1937

John Sloan, Artist Whose Work My Grandma Saw At Whitney:

Overslept and woke to drink fine coffee M. had made though he gone.  Dale called.  Also Binnie. During walk when to the Whitney Museum on 8^th street.  Looked at a couple of nice N.Y. street scenes by John Sloan the El at Sixth and 3d and a backyard, snowy with laundry and two fierce cats.  Also a lovely desert scene called Western Railway imagine must have been during sand storm, and think M. would like. Also exceedingly peculiar piece called American Farm by Joe Jones of St. Louis—house and barn and windmill on top of small high cone of land and far below it bare brown corrugated rolls of earth; could only suppose this brutal picture of eroded land.  Lovely water color called Snow, and one piece of sculpture I like of a very proud looking girl half lying, supported on her hands.  Not keeping up with art criticisms have no idea whether these things supposed to admire or not; suspect taste probably pretty juvenile.  In evening Griemes over for bridge.

And her granddaughter, Suzanne Kingsbury, in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010?

Well due date came and went and baby decided to stay all cozy in the belly.  Having baby sort of defies all this hoopla about “don’t have expectations.”  Zen tells us we suffer from expectations but then we get a due date and like it or not, the day blooms like a big fat flower in the background of our minds. So no wonder Grandma and Grandpa were so restless last night (see yesterday’s post).

The little one can’t stay in there forever, though. They always come out eventually, come hell or high water or C-section. Though I don’t know how many C-sections they did back then.  Unlike now when every other lady gets her belly cut lengthwise.  I don’t even think they had many good drugs in 1937.  So, you pretty much had to have it au natural, which his very au courant right now.

Funny how they talk about Little John’s daddy watching him being born and Fritz and Kate were all horrified by that.  The daddy didn’t usually watch back then.  My grandpa was a quiet man, much like my Peter, and maybe he bandied it back and forth in his mind that night, half intrigued, half nervous he’d step on something, like the doctor’s toe or say the wrong thing or faint, seeing his wife in all that pain.  Today the daddies step right up to the plate. One daddy I know caught the little sweetheart in his arms.  They say baby comes out looking like daddy so daddy won’t run away. It’s, you know, an animalistic thing, not that God thinks badly of men or anything.

Anyway, in lieu of no baby, Grandma did the very best thing a girl can do when things aren’t going as planned: She went and looked at art.  At another person’s creation. Thank God she hadn’t read the critics. They ruin everything…

Well, until tmw everybody!!!  It’s anybody’s guess when little baby will emerge out of such interesting, plucky woman’s belly!!!



Here I post a daily diary entry from my grandmother, Maggie, who lived on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, in 1937, and a blog entry from yours truly, who lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010.

What Has Suzanne Been Doing Lo These Many Days?????

January 30th, 2010, Brattelboro, Vermont

Today am catching you up on one, two of my grandma’s long lost days because yours truly has been lolling around in bed with Lyme Disease, feeling very much like I got in a fist fight with a Sumo wrestler. And lost said fight. (to left example by Darby Sawchuck).   Millions and millions of people have called up and written since hearing of disease, some saying sweetly I’ll be fine, take good antibiotics and rest and others alarming me (quite cheerfully) that I am on my way to blindness and living my life from a wheelchair.

Ran right to my doctor’s office and told him to please just drown me in the biggest dose of antibiotics possible, I will build up lost flora later. But doctor very unyielding, and we had a little tug of war, very politely and prettily, about dose of antibiotics.  It’s not his fault.  Insurance won’t pay him if he gives me too many antibiotics. Some lady in her desk in St. Louis will say it’s too expensive.  So, we see what a mess our poor president is trying to fix. When really the person with the infected body and the person with the medical degree have their hands behind their backs, pleading.

Saxton’s River Parade:

Thank goodness for my friend, Margie Pivar, who had Lyme Disease for years and years and years and now she is a local expert.  She right smack away took me under her wing and gave me all her hard earned secrets which involve electromagnetic machines and drinking something called choline.  I first met Margie when I was in her samba troupe, and we danced in the Saxton’s River Fourth of July Parade, with live drummers and percussionists following us.  It was 1996.  Saxton’s River, Vermont has the best parade in the state and maybe all of New England with gigantic puppets and fire hoses spurting water and foodstands and bands on stilts.

Margie first  had symptoms of Lyme disease when she climbed to a high sacred site in Vietnam and her legs swelled to the size of smoke stacks. She was in Vietnam because she was working on her book.  A most amazing and very famous book called Fourth Uncle in the Mountain: A Memoir of a Barefoot Doctor in Vietnam, published by Saint Martin’s Press.  Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is the true story of a little orphan boy in Vietnam, Quang Van Nguyen, who got adopted by a sixty-four-year-old Buddhist monk, a barefoot doctor named Thau, who raised Quang to follow in his footsteps and so saved him, and part of Vietnam’s magical knowledge, from the Vietnamese holocaust.

Quang’s father was wanted by the French regime, and he had to escape into the jungle where he was very happily at home among the plants and animals. Thau wasn’t your average monk; he practiced an ancient form of Chinese medicine and used magic to protect animals and people. Tau brought Quang to study in the mystical Seven Mountains at the Cambodian border, where he was surrounded by crocodile-infested flood lands. The mountains were filled with scary animals like elephants, panthers, tigers, and the largest pythons on earth. The villages there had hidden much of South East Asia’s esoteric knowledge for the past hundred years.  And Quang learned it.

Yesterday Margie took me up over the mountains of Vermont, and I actually got to meet the Fourth Uncle in the Mountain, who has lived here for years and years as a refugee.  Lucky for us. Right straight away when you sit in Dr. Quang’s very plain office, you feel better. First of all because he speaks gently and laughs in a kind way. He takes your pulse and tells you a million things just from your wrist.  Like, well, your left kidney isn’t working so well, and your liver is quite taxed and your circulation needs a jump start.  But he says all this with no judgment.  It is like he’s just reading a script, and the script is just fine and everything will be balanced in good time.  There’s absolutely no ego involved, just the plain, bald truth.

And while I was sitting there, looking at the woods out his window and waiting for him to prepare tinctures to help my system through Lyme, I realized that usually when I go into a doctor’s office it’s a sort of violent experience. I mean no one shoots you with a gun or anything, but you all of the sudden feel like you have a big black mark across your face stamped loser, and you are altogether short of what you are supposed to be, and too bad you weren’t perfect like the doctor, who sits across from you, hoping you’ll hurry up with your aches and pains because he’s an hour late for the next loser.  But somehow all that is absent in Dr. Quang’s office where he wears leather sandals and blinks quite happily at you and tells you without attitude what the terrain of your body looks like. Just like he might relay the terrain of the pretty landscape out his window, where he knows every fungi and mushroom and leaf and tree that might help the human body reach a happy harmonic balance, which is after all hard for a body in this world. Especially a sensitive artist body that would just as soon like to experience everything, pretty please.

So, I went home feeling glad that Dr. Quang came to our country and that Margie wrote a book about him and that Margie is my friend. On the way home it was about 3 degrees and the wind blew the snow across the road and we were toasty warm in Margie’s car and she told me that Hooray!! She’s all cured now of Lyme. And now it’s my turn.  We talked about dancing and fathers and how lovely our men at home are and we talked about writing and Dr. Quang and how, when he first came to this country from the Seven Mountains of Vietnam, he worked as a janitor, and you could see him walking the woods around the Bennington Campus, tasting leaves and bark, just to see…

Now I will leave you, and catapult you into the very different world of Manhattan 73 years ago. Where our dear Maggie Duffield is traipsing into her own doctor’s office with, thank God, a pregnant belly that is acting very appropriately. Tomorrow I will post a few more to catch us up…. Tralala happy Saturday!!!

What has Maggie been doing these past few days on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan????

January 27, 1937

Set up crib last night.  M. Revealing himself as mechanical genius, figuring out in spite of mislaid parts.  Bobbie called, said had job as resident buyer for out of town stores, stationary and handbags.  Loves the job. This morning to Doctor who said nothing.  Had lost two pounds.  Bottle of Graves from Hearns on sale at 88cents, pretty good.  Anne Wolf down to call and I bound rubber sheet while talking to her about practically nothing.  M. home disgusted with Herald Tribune, read history of T. and intrigued by parallels in careers of Whitelaw and Ogden, also amused by caginess of book: Author got job on paper on strength of his Ph.D. thesis. Backgammon and bed.

January 28, 1937

Had hair done. In evening Ned came down with friend had picked up in Yale Club whomehe called “screwy” over the phone.  Friend, John, turned out to be screwy only insomuch as he had some sense and was interested in what went on in the world.  He had been in Navy and explained to us that Navy wants merchant marine so that merchant ships may be turned into supply ships in case of war. Said he favored “Cash and Carry’ method of export in case of war as would be most likely to keep us out of a war, but did not think people would take to it as it would mean depression.  Of course if you get into the war you get the depression anyway a little later,* but he does not think people would look ahead that way and is probably right.

He works for importing company which brings China wood oil over for paint and varnish. Said olive oil industry in terrible state as Mussolini had cut off exports, the trouble in Spain has also made it so they have cut it off, too. The only other place to get it was Greece and Germans, so his company recently sewed that up. On top of this Federal Trade Commission has landed on guys who sell fake olive oil which this guy said is really tea seed oil* though not very clear what tea seed is. Threw the gentleman out about 11 and to bed.  Had my hair parted in the middle hoping to look like Madonna but did not succeed. Very restless and M. too though silly to let ourselves.  Have promising feeling pangs every evening or so then to bed and they away.

*If only Bush had known my grandma!!!

* Essential oil extracted from the leaves of the paperbark Melaleuca alternifolia and used for medicinal purposes. With its high smoke point (485°F.), tea seed oil is the main cooking oil in some of the southern provinces of China.  (even back then we were getting fake things from China and renaming them!)

PS: Tomorrow is the due date.  We’ll see what  happens…!

Here I post a daily diary entry from my grandmother, Maggie, who lived on Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, in 1937, and a blog entry from yours truly, who lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, 2010.

January 26th, 1937, Saint Mark’s Place, Manhattan, Maggie’s diary continues:

Anticipated quiet day and evening so called Edith about lunch.  Had lunch at Charles’— chiffonade salad—and she said they had been to two parties at Studin’s where she met *Edward J. O’Brien whom they didn’t like, said he was a flabby, affected, poseur, celebrity hunting.  One was for Mrs. Day, the other for *Dorothy McCleary.  After lunch to Esposito’s, Ugobuono’s for bread and Babas, Wanamaker’s for tape and home.

Kate then called, and said she’d gotten through with Infirmary early today and so would come over for tea.  Cut two of pads bought at Macy’s for crib thinking might as well bind them while talking to Kate.  She showed me how best to bind said pads and did two and a half herself.  Said they had new China boy as servant named Yic who was to cook first dinner tonight; she had just bought new silver dessert spoons and forks; and had dodged a subpoena to testify in court on insurance case, etc…. Gossiped cosily until almost six.

GM Strike of 1937:

Jennette McColl called up and said she was in town inspecting spring styles, as she’s now the fashion editor of Detroit Free Press so told her to come on down, and she turned up about six-thirty, looking very well in chic, tall, pointed hat and, if my eyes did not deceive me, eye shadow.  She had cocktails with M. and me and talked about G.M. strike.  Said men at Briggs formed picket line four deep, each alternate line going in different direction and walking briskly or dogtrotting to keep warm so it was almost impossible to get through without being buffeted though no rough stuff.  Very quiet and well-behaved.  Free Press prints no news on strikers’ side.  Said Briggs is known as The Butcher Shop because so many maimed working there. They’re asking forty-hour week, minimum wage, qualified doctor to attend injured, an slower assembly line, speed-up in those plants burns man out in very few years—M. said reporter for H.T. talked to attractive young girl who explained being on strike in Flint by pointing to husband who was only year or two older than she, but looked like her father, and she said he came home for work on assembly line trembling and no good as husband or anything else.  Jennette also told of Henry Ford insisting men buy homes in Highland Park when factory there, then got into trouble with Wall Street and moved factory to River Rouge and the men stuck with those homes, have to spend three hours getting to and from work through no fault of own.

Went around corner to Jade Mountain for dinner.  Jennette telling about Seventh Avenue, sitting in booths watching models parade past while salesman announces in lovely British accent number of model and price, though when replying to questions the same salesman speaks in purest Joosh (Walter Winchell’s word). Quite fascinated by style job; says Detroit overgrown village in taste—though some in country would disagree.

Home and Florence and Reback in, Sammy was with a patient down the street at The Brittany. She looking very well, too, and told about Sammy’s interest in horseback riding and how good he is at it; she taking swimming lessons.  Then Binnie came in (M. asking could he go to pool room to escape deluge feminity) with Moro in little red sweater.  He ran around sniffing dented silverice all given to play with but hastily taken away from by M.  who horrified at this unexpected vandalism.

Binnie distressed by flood (which worse than ever today and Louisville almost entirely under water, without gas, heat, water or anything) because retail trade in that section ruined for summer unless, she said, she could get a waterwing account right soon.

She told of a man who went to Hollywood with script he never got to show but sold title first day for $400—“Love Is My Business”, which was tacked on to film already made. Then Sammy in. He showed pictures of his child and Binnie countered with pictures of her niece. M. telling of two bets not to brag about child and all hooted.  Found out he could go to room with me, and come to see me as soon as out from under anesthetic—things we hadn’t known till now.  Kate also had kindly warned against guest meals at hospital, saying very expensive.

John L. Lewis: (looks like a racketeer to me)

Binnie left eleven thirty, called for by taxi driver who had won her heart on way down by having change for $10 so she had told him to return.  Others stayed, talked about Russia, and whether or not it’s a handicap to be only child, Jennette, M. and I being only children, Florence and Sammy not.  More about strike and discussion as to whether or not *John L. Lewis is a racketeer.

Impromptu party finally broke up about one, fine time having been had by all.  So ended “quiet” day. I said as we were going to bed, I wished this would happen oftener as thoroughly enjoyed.  M. had another struggle with Binnie over revealing where she lives, she wouldn’t tell, and he thinks we ought to stand on principle and not let her know about baby as consequence. Binnie said, by the way, her mother wrote that Claremont blanketed by smudge pall, pts going on in organge groves at five at night and not turned off till ninin the morning, which unprecedented, neighbor with groves had spent $1500 on oil in week; gobs of soot size of baseballs rolling in street, and brown cocker spaniel entirely black; ice in her brother’s minnow pool.  Folks wrote the other day that ice three eighths of an inch thick in their bird bath this winter.  Top-coat weather here today.

*Edward J O’Brien: probably the poet and short story writer.
*Dorothy McCleary novelist.
*John L. Lewis helped raise living standards for millions of American families and helped create some of the nation’s leading labor unions, including the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and many other labor organizations that continue to speak in behalf of America’s workers.

And What Was Her Granddaughter, Suzanne, Doing in Brattleboro, 2010:

My goodness, skip a day with grandma, and it’s a deluge the next.  It just makes me feel so plucky about the world that that there were terrible floods going on then, too, and GM strikes and husbands winding up maimed old men and gobs of soot-blackened cocker spaniels in California.  Whatever that means.  I didn’t get that part, did you?  Anyway, we are in a fine mess ourselves, but it’s always been a mess so tra la al, might as well find the bright side. Like my grandma did: eating chiffonade salads (never heard of these) at Charles’ and prancing around with the Detroit Fashion Editor.  Leave it to Hollywood to buy a title. You can’t even copyright a title, how in the heck can you buy one?

British Drawing Room (for sissies):

Looking on the bright side isn’t all that easy over here. As the ER visit, when my ribs joints blew up to the size of balloons, turned out to be some vile little virus called Lyme Disease, that you get from ticks the size of a pinhead.  Everytime I get diseased like this, I blame it on my British ancestors.  Kingsbury means, essentially, King’s Land, and right there you know you are in trouble.  My ancestors were, well, sissies. They lounged around all day in drawing rooms with powdered breasts and corsets and once in a while played a little diddie on the piano, which was such an exertion, they needed smelling salts.  They didn’t even get up to answer the door and instead of exercising their eyes to see the operatic stage, they used pearl studded opera glasses. A henchman held their arms up so their elbows wouldn’t tire.  They even sat while playing sports, polo’s not really hard, the horse does all the work.

My husband, on the other hand, has probably had 109 ticks and never gotten Lyme Disease.  His ancestors were potato farming fifteen hours a day in brutal Irish weather, and drinking toxic stout at night to keep their livers strong.  Then, when they were starving, they all hopped on a freezing cold crappy boat and went to America, where they brawled their way from the bottom of New York to the farms of New England.

One year my husband willy nilly jumped on a plane to Tikrit and helped out in a med vac unit where he worked 13 hour days, 6 days a week in 120 degree heat. This was back when he smoked a pack a day and drank pounds of coffee. “Didn’t you get dehydrated?” I asked him.  “Once I got a little dizzy,” he said.  “But I drank some water, and it went away.”  Right now he works with adolescent boys, I can’t really explain what he does, but he is sort of like the Pied Piper. Those boys are always sneezing and touching everything and coughing and spitting and farting.  “I don’t wash my hands much during the day,” my husband says.  “It’s important to develop antibodies.”  One year he had perfect attendance.  No sick days at all.  But once in a great shocking while, he gets sick.  You know it because he sneezes 45 times in a row and insists it’s allergies. The next day, when he has a raging fever and a swine flu symptoms, he slams the phone down after he’s called in because he’s so mad he can’t go to work.  After which he sleeps 15 hours without water or food or vitamins and Poof like magic the thing is gone.  He’s 43 and half his grandparents are still living.

So, if you’re of Mayflower, British stock, make sure you mix a little Irish in.  Or even better, some Hungarian. In the meantime, I’ll just lay around on my velvet couch, popping doxcicycline and feeling very British.  Thank goodness for my grandmother’s diary, she parties enough for both of us.