Yeah. I spoke too soon. Apparently 6 days after chemo, it was a little ambitious to try to take care of my whole household, baby those who are sick, teach and care for those who are well, put away all the Christmas stuff, and swoop up the outgrown baby stuff for donations and freecycle.
Yesterday, I cried uncle and called in the support troops. Gramma and Grampa came down to help, giving me a day to rest before my own fever went higher, and giving the boys a day with their grandparents while Daddy recovered. It was the best present ever.
I think we’re better today, after a day off, but, then I thought that last night too, after I spent 2+ hours putting Widget to bed … just before he came out in the hall and vomited all over both of us. Great. Maybe another day will do it.
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I did get to read a really amazing novel while putting the boys to bed this week … If on a winter’s night a traveler, by Italo Calvino. What an eye-opening piece of work. It was written in 1979, after some academics had declared the novel “dead,” and its form and content show it to be anything but. What an interesting diversion, and a pleasant book about reading. Not writing; reading. It’s a strange little book, with 10 short stories purporting to be beginnings of actual novels, with different characters, themes, techniques, etc — but always a thread of similarity running through them, like a repeated character name or political conflict. It’s very self-conscious as well, as if you were looking over someone’s shoulder reading the first few chapters, and then between the chapters there is a different novel taking place, interactions between The Reader, which may or may not be taken to be you, the actual reader, and The Other Reader, who joins The Reader in a story that begins quite calmly and turns into a world-spanning adventure to unearth the endings of these novels, and the reasons why they came to be dismembered. The book talks about reading as an active way of seeing the world, and about the world as if one were reading it. Really, an eye-opening book. To find out more, I’d suggest reading the reviews on Amazon — not Wikipedia, as it ruins one of the best parts of the novel. You can also read this first excerpt instead, or just hunt it down at the library. It’s a good one!
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