Fun with being sick! Oh boy!

I've decided I like lists. So today I thought I'd make a list of all the fun things a person can do while they're so sick they'd just as soon be dead and they've been confined to their bedroom for a little longer than what's good for their sanity! I don't know where I come up with this great stuff!!!

1. Stare at your bedroom until you decide you hate everything in it. Bonus points if you actually overhaul the entire room when you feel better again.

2. Origami tissues. Since there's not typically a lot of entertainment in a bedroom you have to get creative. The tissue box is right there - just pull one out. My specialties are a rock and a piece of crumpled paper - you should see them - very realistic.

3. Blowing saltine cracker crumbs everywhere. This one you have to try to know how fun it is. Stuff a bunch of saltines in you mouth - crunch them swiftly and carelessly with your mouth open - this works best if your mouth is really dry - then blow. It's like snow. Ah, the excitement.

4. Call for people. Your family will love this one. Always wait till they've left the room before you call them back. Make sure they've made it a good way down the hall at least.

6. Blow bubbles in your drink with a straw. I think this one is self explanatory.

7. Obsess about the cleanliness of your room. Allow the tiniest purity infraction to really get in your craw until you're so indignant it almost gives you enough energy to do something about it. Creating drama in your life really makes it more interesting. (What is a craw exactly?)

8. Check Facebook, Pinterest and every other social websites you can think of and keep looking at them until your brain melts.

9. Complain. This is especially fun when you have an audience but said audience is not actually necessary.

10. Find shapes in your ceiling texture. This is almost as good as finding shapes in clouds! 

11. Look at everything cross eyed. The downside to this one is that it might make you feel sicker, especially if you have a stomach complaint. Squinting at everything can be pretty entertaining too.

12. Make a landscape out of your blanket. Mostly I make mountains and hills.

13. Watch TV until all your faith in humanity is irretrievably lost. Let's face it, depression is better than boredom.

14. While watching TV squish peoples heads on the screen between your fingers or look at them through a circle you make with your hand.  TVs and optical illusions can pass quite bit of time.

16. Change channels on your TV really quickly and string the sound bites together to create crazy conversations.

17. Have someone get a remote control for your lamps. Click them on and off and on and off. You can make your own light show!

18. Use a lamp to make a shadow show on the wall. Butterflies and crocodiles are my favorite. 

19. When everything else fails to entertain and you're getting desperate blog about something really stupid.

Coupon Code

In order to reserve the right to eventually publish a hard copy of my book if I so choose I have to set a certain price for the e-book. But I like bargains so I offer one to potential book buyers. To get 40% off, here's a coupon code good till July 19th: DG75F

Book Published - Yikes!

Death bed requests should be taken seriously.

I always thought if I ever got one I would be non-committal and then I wouldn't be obliged one way or another. (At this point you should probably be asking yourself why I'd ever thought through how I would respond to a death bed request.) I underestimated the power of someone I love asking me to do something before she died.

We became friends before she was diagnosed with cancer. I have lupus amongst other nasty things and she came home from a vacation and asked me if my bones hurt. I said no, my joints hurt. She said her bones hurt.  I said that's not normal; go see a doctor. It was bone cancer. Bone cancer is terminal. People don't recover from bone cancer. It was horrible.

I have a lot of health problems, and I mean a lot. I am riddled with chronic illnesses. I don't like people to know the extent to which I've had to modify my life to live with them and thrive but I let her in because she was the only person who, instead of looking at the way I lived my life in horror understood what I was dealing with.We laughed about them.

This is the power of friendship. You can laugh at debilitating chronic illnesses. You can laugh at terminal cancer. We called bone cancer a chronic illness. We laughed at her wig. We laughed at people's reactions. We laughed when I'd get diagnosed with something new. It made it all more bearable.

And we cried. She call when she didn't feel up to visitors. Crying usually happened on the phone, laughing usually happened in person. I guess because if I was with her we were both feeling relatively good.

She mentioned she was running out of things to read during chemo. As a friend I naturally wanted to help with that. I made book suggestions. She wanted to read my book. So I let her. She loved it because she loved me.

It took years for her to go because she is a fighter. I saw her for the last time a few weeks before she died. I knew it was the last time, she knew it was the last time. After that she was in and out of consciousness and slept most of the time. Her family told me she was hardly ever lucid after that and when she was, it wasn't for long. And I got an e-mail.

The e-mail had a request in it. Publish the book.

I didn't want to. I didn't say one way or the other whether I would. I sent a gushy e-mail back. I don't know if she ever saw it.

And then I sat on the book with this request niggling at the back of my head. A year passed and it got worse. I couldn't stop thinking about her and how in the last clear moments she had she'd taken the time to e-mail me and ask me to do something for her. Wasn't her life and her death worth a sacrifice on my part to do this one small thing?

So I published the book. Not enough. I told people about the book. No. I feel I really have to do this thing. Which is simply not my style. I'm a very private person who is effective at masquerading as an open person if the need arises. But she knew me and knew me well and I think any effort I put forth she will understand is uncomfortable and as long as I reach out of my comfort zone it will be enough and maybe that was the motive behind the request.

I miss my friend. No one understood the way she did. And this is for her.