This is not a real post. Consider this an excused absence from my normal blog writing. i have what my father affectionately referred to as the Galloping Consumption, a term he applied to any respiratory illness that makes you doubt your will to live. Having spent six months in the hospital for tuberculosis, I consider him an expert in this area.

I’m in my second week of the Galloping Consumption. I haven’t been able to sleep, hold a conversation or even read a story to my children. Hubs is renting out my side of the bed and taking applications for a new wife and mother, should I finally blow a major blood vessel on my next coughing fit.  Meanwhile I entertain visions of myself in a cane-backed wheel chair with a lap blanket, being wheeled around by an attendant or lying supplicant on a velvet couch while Johnny Depp recreates Neverland in my sitting room. In my visions I cough with an English accent.

Now I wouldn’t publicly declare myself an optimist but I am prone to want to look at the bright side of a situation, so I can say that I’ve lost ten pounds, though most of it has been in muscle tone and breast tissue. I’m on the verge of obtaining the coveted lollipop figure that LA is known for. Rachel Zoe actually considered taking me as a client until she realized that there was movement in my forehead and declared me dead to her until I developed the good sense to paralyze my face with Botox.

However just between you and me, even a career as a geriatric super model isn’t enough to raise my spirits while I am coughing mercilessly through the night. I can be tough and resilient for short stretches but I grow impatient about hardship quickly and then I’m just irritable and nihilistic.

I’d be terrible at war. Sure I’d be focused and bad@ss for a couple of fire fights but then I’d grow weepy, start complaining about a lack of coffee breaks and finally I’d lie down in a fox hole and wait for enemy fire to claim me. They never would’ve made a mini series about my war-time heroics. So don’t hold out for Band of Brothers and One Sister. It ain’t coming.

Anyway, thank you for your patience. Normal posts will resume shortly.