Sometimes I am a slow learner. It has taken me all of my life till now to realize that my physical rigor is below normal and not temporary due to impermanent circumstances. I was so determinedly active, with lapses for exhaustion, when I was living my middle life that I thought I was just like everyone else. And I totally forgot those grammar school days when all the kids were playing in the school yard during recess and the temp was 20 degrees or lower (Chicago, after all) and I was hiding in the basement next to the radiator coils. I had to hide because the monitors made you go outside. I did not make the connection that maybe the other kids had more physical marbles than I had.

I have a deviated septum, almost corrected, but, apparently not quite and, apparently, now that I am older, it is more of a problem and I get sinus infections. I think I have one now (awful, persistent odor in my nose) and it is laying me low. Next stop, am eye-ear-nose-throat doctor.

One of the political activist sites that send me E mails, solicited for funds. I can’t do it since I get 10 a day and they all want contributions. I am tapped out. But this one was hard to resist because it is targeting the ten Tea Party members of Congress who have been f*****g things up. The site was kind enough to post their photos in a group, so I copied it and enlarged it and printed it and it has gone on my Doers of Evil board and I have stuck pins in eyes and throats. Their names are Walsh, Cravaack, West, Guinta, King, and Duffy. This is a very fulfilling hobby and not as self-destructive as the teeth-grinding thing.

I love my new appliances, the stainless top-of-the-line GE dishwasher (so quiet, you can’t hear it unless you put your ear to the door) and the GE Profile refrigerator. (We now “need” a stainless stove, but I am not pushing it.) The refrigerator has about 8 rectangular lights set diagonally down one side of the door and the lower ones illuminate the drawer interiors. It’s hard to miss anything that starts growing in there.

Meanwhile, my ceramic cook top has a discolored stain over one of the burners and I swear to you it looks just like Jesus. I am seriously contemplating advertising this phenomenon and charging $1 per person for a peek -- that I do not think is all that greedy, considering the nature of this "find" -- and this should translate into big bucks in this particular area. Or I could just slosh it off with a hard sponge and a ceramic cream cleaner and get a life.

Ed drove to Naples this morning to take the state test to become, officially, a guardian. He spent the last three days cramming. The manual is as big as a phone book. But he did the college thing (which is to say, sat down with the material just as if he was 19.)

My gtf Nadine has invited us to a bouillabaisse dinner tomorrow and our women’s lunch friends will be there, along with husbands. I love this group.

xx, Teal

P.S. I thought Jay was kidding when he used to say, "I've married the runt of the litter." Ah, hindsight.