Last summer, we installed a cat door for our beloved feline family member, Frodo. It’s a simple contraption, really – just a semi-transparent flap attached to the top of a small square hole sliced into our back door by my industrious hubby, held together with some hardware thingamajigs. You know – a Lowe’s kit.
As I sit down to write this column, it occurs to me that I am tired. Fatigued. Exhausted. To quote a favorite British mystery writer of mine, I’m flat out knackered.
In case you hadn’t heard, I am now a Blogger. Yes, I’ve finally been inducted into that ancient, time-honored profession (five years old, at least) to which only a few (million) writers gain acceptance.
This is a hard column for me to write. It’s about something that scares me, and I don’t like thinking – much less writing – about things that scare me. I’m talking about cancer. The Big C.
I’m writing this column from a hotel room in Las Vegas. Seriously. Your faithful, small-town scribe is seated at a very posh desk in a very posh room on the eleventh floor of the obscenely posh Red Rock Casino, Spa, & Resort, where she’s been ensconced in luxury for the past two days. Your faithful, small- town scribe could get used to this.
In his well-worn poem “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time,” Robert Herrick encourages his readers (especially the virginal ones) to “gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Anyone who ever took English 101 knows that the poet is urging us to seize the day (carpe diem!) while we’re still young, to revel in life’s sensual pleasures while the reveling’s still good.