Update

I see I was complaining about feeling rundown a week ago. Then I got The Cold, a little after we discovered that Patrick did not have strep throat, but did have pneumonia. He just finished his course of antibiotics and is feeling a lot better.

I seem to have a knock-down, drag-out upper respiratory infection with coughing, sneezing, sinus headaches, plugged ears and exhaustion. It's getting enough better that I am starting to notice that I need to clean house and possibly want to write.

Because I've felt too rotten to do anything productive, I have been reading the news too much. Libya is discouraging right now. Wisconsin is also discouraging. I finally switched to reading about dinosaurs, because I love them and they calm me. They were huge and wonderful and existed for so long and now the ones that remain are birds.

I wrote a poem about them something like 25 years ago, after reading a Robert Bakker article in Scientific American:

Little did I realize
that every summer breeze
brings the sound of dinosaurs
singing in the trees;

And in the cool of morning
when dew is barely dry,
the cousins of Triceratops
soar across the sky.

Triceratops is dead and gone,
which proves the worth of might.
Maybe we should put our trust
in music and in flight.

I quote it to myself from time to time, because it cheers me up.