set on fire

I would like to know what you have been thinking about.  But I do not mean the recycled musings about  your lost youth, fantasies in which you appear as a tragic hero, drunk and heartbroken, tough and unknowable.  I mean the things we have tried not to talk about that make us human, like my obsession with floor tiles, your obsession with the ladder.  The boring things that cannot be made into a feature film, but might make a nice book if you would allow me to read it.

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I am reading Half-Blood Blues, which is exactly the sort of book I would never have chosen to read on my own - but I have joined a book club, which is the kind of middle-aged suburban soccer mom kind of thing I do these days.  And the book is interesting.  I abandoned Worst. Person. Ever. without finishing it, which is the kind of thing I almost never do to books.  (People maybe.)


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Ophelia has a herniated disc, which was mistakening diagnosed as a fibrocartilaginous embolism.  She had a CT scan and an ultrasound to make sure.  It means that I have been treating it wrongly when it flares up, encouraging her to walk around and shake it off, when in fact she should have been resting.  She will probably need surgery, which I hate the thought of, but not as much as her being in pain.  It is mostly good news in that the condition is treatable and non-life-threatening.


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