Dog (and cat) days of summer

Last Saturday I woke with viral gastreoenteritis. I will spare you the gross details, but I was very sick. All that day I was able to keep down a tiny bit of oatmeal and one soft boiled egg. I had terrible stomach cramps and a light fever. I had invited Stephen and Dale over. Their kitchen is being redone – they live in a very old Cape with one of those widowmaker stairs that are more laddes than stairs. The kitchen was decades old, the floor was rotten and one of the weight bearing beams had gone. As all of us do, they had imagined the work being done by midJuly or at the worst by the end of July. Electricians are few out here and being vouchshafed even a glimpse of one passing is worth a prayer of gratefulness. They waited and waited and waited. Finally recently the electrician came and did his work. Now they are waiting for the plumber. then they will wait for the ordered cabinets to come. Dale has an outdoor grill and a microwave but after 2 months, he had given up and they were eating defrosted entrees from the supermarket. So in spite of being sick, we didn’t have the heart to renig. Woody did the cooking. I couldn’t eat. I lay on the couch watching television, so sick even to read. They all had a good time,and when they had dessert upstairs, I was glad for the distraction. Willow was delighted that Stephen had returned to play with her.All week I have gradually, glacially slowly, improved. Then Woody came down with it. He has announced he is dying. It does hurt but he has not stopped going to the gym or leaving off work. Anyhow today Ti-Grace Atkinson is coming to visit for the weekend and Woody has gone to pick her up at the ferry from Boston. We will go this afternoon to Ros Baxandall’s goodbye party. She is dying very quickly of cancer and thought why have a memorial that she can’t enjoy after she’s gone. Why not have the memorial while she’s still here to enjoy it? So that’s what’s happening today. I have to cook for supper as we’ll be gone all afternoon in the heat with 90 other people in a smallish yard with 2 porta-potties. So this will be short so I can get to work in the kitchen. this coming Friday Woody and I gteach a memoir workshop at the Cape Cod Writers Conference in Hyannis and then have supper with our old friend Charles Coe. When we had Leapfrog, we published his first book of poetry and it did very well. Charles is a good reader and he was an ideal writer to publish as he read anyplace he could and sold books. We sold out of the first printing and had to reprint. He’s giving a poetry workshop on Saturday. Then after an early supper, I give the keynote. Then we go home to pissed off cats.