I apologize for being a sporadic blogger of late. This “whatever-it-is” is taking its own sweet time leaving my system. I’m definitely seeing progress but I don’t have a lot of energy. Still coughing, sneezing, etc., but the chest is clearing and that’s a good thing. Frankly, when it takes all morning and into the afternoon for me to begin to feel halfway decent, the last thing I want to do is take a picture and blog.

And now Don has come down with it. He’s feeling pretty yucky this morning and I’m going to try to muster the energy to take care of him, like he took care of me.

For the time being, the loveseat and trunk are in our storage locker. I had a negative emotional reaction to them the other day – quite a strong one. I don’t quite understand it, and I’m sick, of course, which must have an effect on my emotions, but I couldn’t get everything back in that trunk soon enough. I also couldn’t handle seeing the loveseat in the living room and not knowing where, if anywhere, I wanted to put it. Same with the trunk.

It’s interesting. I’ve known I would have to retrieve this stuff eventually, and I kept putting it off. Most of the stuff in the trunk is memorabilia from high school and college and my time as a camp counselor. None of it symbolized an unhappy memory. But I couldn’t stand looking at it. I tried to articulate it to my husband and he, being the incredibly wise man he is, stepped in and said he understood and did I want him to move them to storage for now?

Yes, I said. So he did just that yesterday and I felt a wave of relief. All of this has been in my friend’s basement since I moved away to go to graduate school, which would have been 1983. Why it’s triggering such strong feelings, I have no idea.

I almost didn’t share this with you but I knew you’d ask me where I decided to put things. So there’s your answer: in storage.

I did keep the Haviland china here. No negative reaction to that.

This is the Pink Roses pattern. It’s Haviland Limoges and it was made in France – at least, the serving pieces have those markings- the teacups are marked ‘Austria.’ I’ll have to do some research into Haviland patterns. Since this was my great grandmother’s set of dishes, it’s from the late 1880s – early 1890s. As with much of the Haviland pieces of the time, there’s a lot of gold on the handles and edges.

I’m going to try and clear a shelf in the china cabinet in the den and display them there, which means I’ll have to re-home some of my McCoy pieces.

Okay. That’s it for today.

Happy Tuesday.

Very, very cold. Water dripping from the taps so the pipes don’t freeze. Waking up in the middle of the night with a coughing jag.

I’ll be glad when all of this has passed.

I heard the shocking news that one of my former students passed away yesterday. Lonnie was a student of mine at Boston University and what a bright light he was. Kind, compassionate, funny, wise – he spent the years after graduating working for those in need, especially those who were suffering from AIDS. His extraordinary work touched thousands and, in reading the comments about him on Facebook, it is clear that he made a real difference in so many lives. He had a heart attack last week. We thought he was doing better. But his wife wrote yesterday that his brain activity was profoundly affected by the heart attack and they made the decision to take him off life support.

He had a four year old daughter.

I hadn’t talked to him in person for years, but we occasionally communicated via FB. All of us in the Boston University theater community are shocked and deeply saddened. He was such a fine person. An angel here on earth. Gone far too soon.

Stay warm out there.

Happy Thursday.

Hey everyone. If you haven’t figured it out by now I’m feeling very under the weather with a bad cold. It’s knocked me out and writing a blog post has not been a priority, especially when my brain feels like mush.

When this happens, check Instagram. It’s far easier for me to write two sentences on IG in order to alert everyone that I’m not posting than it is for me to sign into the blog and do all the things I have to do once I’m there before I can even write a post.

If you don’t have IG, you can look on the right side of my blog – at the bottom is a widget that shows my latest IG posts. Click on it and you’ll get an update.

Thank you so much for your concern, my friends.

We’re also dealing with a lot of snow (more coming today) and I can’t help Don shovel. And dangerous wind chills.

Anyway, I’m slowly – very slowly – feeling a bit better.

Happy Wednesday.