How Come I Haven't Blogged Since Halloween?

This morning I got an email from a friend, asking me why I haven't written a blog since Halloween. Instead of telling her the truth, I emailed her that I had a lot of "crap" going on - a nice, vague answer if there ever was one. Do you really want to know?

If so, are some of my best excuses: I've been dealing with massive (sometimes even 3-days-in-a-row) migraines, overseeing our new heating system thermostat which continues to malfunction, tutoring 1st and 2nd graders at Sarah J. Rawson School in Hartford, diligently keeping up with reading The New Yorker and New York Magazine, oh-so-religiously watching UConn men's and women's basketball game on TV, knitting up a storm, exercising 4-5 days each week, checking emails and Facebook to find out what's going on with friends and my daughter (she regularly posts stuff she neglects to tell me - so god forbid I should miss one little detail).

Today's excuse? I drove myself to the doctor, because I have a cough, instead of zipping over to my usual Wednesday morning stretch and tone class.

What surprised me was that I wasn't slotted in to see my regular doctor (no one bothered to mention this when I phoned for an appointment). It turns out he's been replaced with stand-ins and laptop computers. The two strangers who saw me didn't bother introducing themselves (the first one measured my weight, blood pressure, and temperature; the second checked my ears, nose, and throat, then prescribed some stuff while sitting at her computer, tap, tap, tapping away). I mean, why interact when you can obsessively enter data into a laptop computer?

Is it selfish of me to wish they'd been a little more interested in cough, cough, cough...me.

I have more excuses - there are always more - but I don't want to bore you with my need for coughing up long, drawn-out details. Instead of writing, I'm focusing all my energy on getting rid of my new cough, which I picked up somewhere between last Wednesday's trip to NYC and this past Sunday, checking my list twice (yes, I've been naughty and nice), and sublimating how awful it's going to be to be felt up by TSA workers when we fly to Chicago on Christmas Day to celebrate my first Christmas with my daughter and her husband's family.

Ho. Ho. Ho. Minus the bottles of rum.