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Slinking on back to blogging

Abandoned blog,
I’m slinking on back to you.
I can’t say I’ve missed you.  I’ve been too  busy and then, too guilty thinking I should have been telling you about my life, my reading.  I’ve visited and celebrated family events – a wedding, a birthday, Thanksgiving, and not made mention  of a single marvelous moment.
I’ve been to New York City, suburban Boston and Portland, Maine. Here’s a picture of me in New York.
I’ve helped clean out a basement, had tea and lunch with friends, returned to part-time work, and caught a cough.
An awful cough.
For days, I couldn’t talk without coughing – a sign perhaps telling me to keep my mouth shut and get my fingers busy. A sign I ignored. One night I woke coughing so deeply my lungs ached.
No other symptoms.
Just the worst cough I can remember.  The last one so long ago that I didn’t think about cough medicine or going to the doctor until everyone – husband, relatives, friends kept saying the word pneumonia – as in you can die from pneumonia.
The medicine broke slowly broke up whatever was clogging up my  lungs, and I am on the mend.
With the cough nearly gone, gone too are  (most of) my excuses for not blogging, not writing.
I’ve read quite a few books – and said little or nothing about them, wherein lies the guilt. It began with Cloud Atlas, whose six stories in one kind of overwhelmed me. I so wanted to write about it, but it seemed such a big project.  I still long to get back to it.
Then Jo Nesbo’s Phantom arrived in the mail – preordered long ago at Amazon --- and I chose reading over writing. With it, Gillian’s Flynn’s Gone Girl, perfect choice while travelling (given consistent attention disruptions). Finished Gone Girl while away. Then sister-in-law Audrey handed me Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which I read half of before returning home.  Once back, took it out of the library and read the other half. While at the library, picked up The Right Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman and am making slow progress through it. On a reading roll.

I write because it is unlikely I will go back and give each a thorough thinking through, but I need to get blogging again.
Dear Blog, as well as anyone who happens to read my ramblings,

I’m back.
Posted by Barbara Bartels at 7:30 AM