Turn, Turn, Turn

The sofa is my new home. Here, I can see out two windows—one in the wall, one in the door-- to naked trees, hazy vacant skies, and a lot of rain.

I sit, propped up against a pillow, with the dog curled up in a bright yellow blanket on the rug below, and write all day long between cringes. Paula Deen on Food TV is my current audience...or maybe I’m hers. She’s making peanut butter balls today. I’m stuck with soup and JELL-O for lunch. I’ve got some sort of mystery ailment…strange jabs of pain in my right side that have been going on for about a month. I’ve had four rounds of tests and been scanned all over, but I’m still waiting for someone to figure out what’s happening. In the meantime, I’m basically avoiding food and resorting to watching it on television instead.

Giada is on now, with that exaggerated smile that covers her face. She is eating a gooey sandwich. Jeremy just happens to be in the kitchen stirring up a batch of her marinara recipe. He’s pretending it’s spring.

If I could snap my fingers and make the day different, there would be green leaves and buds on the trees outside and rays of sunshine pouring down. Sam would smell better (he needs a bath badly), and I’d be in the sunroom painting on my new easel and canvases, with a plate of muffins and an iced coffee nearby. For dinner, I’d make something with lemons a handful of fresh rosemary plucked from the garden.

I'm sure in order to really appreciate days like that (I know they’re coming, just around the corner) you have to have to endure a few grey days on the sofa. I’m just really ready for this down period to be over. I guess it’s like it says in Ecclesiastes (and my favorite song by The Byrds) “for everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”