Three weeks of sick, or: On procrastination

Outside, the current temperature is 75 degrees. It's sunny, it's lovely, the children are playing on the rooftop playground across from my building. This is the first day we've had like this, and people are fairly spilling out onto the streets to enjoy and appreciate our quite late spring weather. Yes, for the moment, Crown Heights is alive and vibrant on the kind of day that screams for a picnic in the park (Prospect Park, but Central would certainly do). It's supposed to rain in a couple hours and continue for the rest of the week, so quick, outside with you to be happy! Dance! Kiss the sky!

And me? I'm sitting up in bed and looking out the window and coughing...no. Barking. I'm barking up my lungs.

I've been sick, with one thing or another, for three weeks straight now. Food poisoning led to fever led to sniffles and then...the outstanding, lusty cough that, in fact, deserves a standing ovation for its tenacity alone, if not its incredible volume. It's been a drag. I can't sleep at night. Various, generic medications course through my veins (thank goodness for the Rite-Aid just around the corner). And I've started to feel sorry for myself. Boo. Boo, illness. Boo. Hoo.

Never one to dwell if I can help it, I've taken this sick-day opportunity to begin a new project. A food blog of sorts, I suppose, though there will be other things too. It's something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and I've finally mustered up the courage to follow through. Food is a very big thing for me. I'd like to write about it, try to figure out my (our?) complicated and ever-enduring relationship with it. I'm new in a strange city. I'm struggling (happily, for the moment) with Big Life Choices. I'm rather adrift and food, more than anything else, brings me home. It centers me. These writings will give me a chance to get to know myself again, to realign my stars and my priorities. And doing this in a public space somehow makes this whole experience more tangible. It's a scary thing, but it's not a bad thing.

I'm not really sure what I'm doing, but I'm never really sure what I'm doing, and I've made it this far. So I'll write, maybe you'll come along, and hopefully we'll all end up around a big table filled with the best stuff on earth, laughing and learning and eating all the way. For now, though, I nurse my cough and clean up the tea cups, water glasses, soup bowls that litter my windowsill.



And wait for the rain, for the lightning. I won't feel guilty sitting inside while it pours, and I always enjoy a good storm.