Well, I just spent the last three weeks laying around sick as a dog. For the past three or four days I’ve been recovering, but it’s been a pretty slow process. No, I don’t know what I had other than to say I’ve never had a malady like this. Never. And I’ve also never been sidelined for longer than a week; I ran a fever for nearly two weeks.

This was crazy man stuff. But I’m not going to waste any more breath on it other than to say that it was bad.

Today I actually got out of the house and walked in the crisp fall air; I spent the morning cleaning up the sick room. Washed everything, swept, etc. There’s no way I was going to have another family member do that for me. On the off chance that there are some lingering germs, viruses, etc., this was a job that I needed to do myself.

So I did it.

Now everything is either tossing in the dryer on high heat, or it is freezing outside on the line.

It’s a logical morning to sit and take stock of things.

On the writing front there is nothing new at the moment; as many of you know some of my work has gone into John Birmingham’s World War 3.1 project over on his patreon.com page.

The disease pretty much sucked all of the creative oxygen out of the room; I haven’t done much.

Another distraction has been the US election. This is not a political page; I won’t go on about this at length. Suffice to say that after much turmoil the system appears to have worked as intended and the President is obliged to make room for his successor.

I’ve watched the whole spectacle from my fever-bed; my phone did a yeoman’s work keeping me entertained in between bouts of staring at the wall or sleeping.

So yeah, it’s good to finally be able to sit up and type without feeling the need to go lay down for a few minutes… which always seemed to turn into hours or half a day.

Feeling better just in time for Thanksgiving. I got sick shortly after the election; probably got infected on the weekend before we all went to vote.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we are keeping it simple this year. But then again we’ve done so since the death of my Grandma, she was the glue that held the family together. But this year there will also be no visiting friends or close family- it’s inadvisable.

This will be a nuclear family only type of gig this year. Just the four of us. I wimped out and ordered a complete traditional meal from a local grocery chain; it might not be gourmet cooking (or Grandma’s!) but it’ll probably do.

All that good American ethnic food. Turkey and stuffing. Gravy. Cranberry. The works for 69 bucks!

For that type of money, why should we kill ourselves?

Maybe it ain’t the best Thanksgiving ever, but you know what? I don’t care.

Let me tick off what I’m happy for.

Solid family. Good friends. Roof over my head. A full belly. Reliable cars.

The list goes on. You know what? When I started compiling this list, I realized that I’m a pretty lucky guy surrounded by pretty lucky people. Yeah, it’s super easy this year to be pissed off at everything, but why be that way?

If you are reading this, you are already a step ahead of the game.

The other day I had a tele-meeting with my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) group up at the VA, and we were talking some stuff over. All of us are combat veterans. Someone brought up how the villagers in Afghanistan would perceive Corona.

It didn’t take long for us to come to the conclusion that the pandemic probably doesn’t mean much to them. When you are worried that the Taliban will come to take your sons in the night, or that your daughters will be kidnapped by the neighboring village boys while doing their farm work, a little disease doesn’t mean a whole lot. When you can lose a child in an instant to cruel and capricious violence, not much else holds the power to frighten.

The conversation was helpful; although I was still weak and sweaty it made me think of the basics.

Life. Liberty. Cleanliness. Reliable food supply.

So yeah, Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

May we be thankful and not pissed off, this rough November is nearly gone.

Good.