Who Needs a Shower?

One of the highlights of my day, yesterday was getting my hair washed by stylist friend Anna at Regis in Annapolis. I can’t take a shower or a bath… only sponge baths. Just think how much water I’m so not wasting these days. Instead of having the pleasure of warm water beating down on my aching shoulders or luxuriating in a hot steamy bubble bath, I make do with warm water, soap, and a wash cloth. So some warm water being sprayed down on my head, even for a few minutes is ecstasy. So much for small pleasures.
The good news is that this is the third day I have walked with my husband Peter down to City Dock Cafe (winner of the Best Coffee award given by What’s Up? Annapolis for over 5 years running). Today we noticed that the Seven Eleven on the corner of Lafayette and West Street is now open for business. If I’m not up to walking all the way downtown now, we can walk there! However I am not a big fan of slurpees and I don’t know that their coffee is that good, however as our neighbor Joyce across the street has pointed out, “Now we have a nearby place to pick up a quart of milk… how convenient.”
THh bad news for me is that the pain continues in a major way, making sleeping at night elusive. I keep trying different techniques to cope with the pain when I wake up and last night I tried something new. We set up the laptop computer in the room where I am sleeping, my daughter Alex’s room. Our upcoming Book Club Selection is Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov and I purchased a used CD of the book. (It is hard for me to stay in a comfortable position to hold a book and turn pages for any appreciable length of time) So when I woke up at 3:00 a.m. I lay flat in bed listening to Jeremy Irons reading the first installment and at least I had something other than pain to focus on until finally sleep returned) I wouldn’t normally recommend Lolita — the story told through the eyes of a pedophile obsessed with a certain pre-adolescent girl– as bedtime reading, but I do need to read it for next month’s discussion.
My book club has been very good to me— lots of encouragement, gourmet dinners (spouses helping too), transportation— what a special group of women, everyone of whom has had to face their own daunting challenges through the years. I’d write a book about them but I think the subject has been done more than once which means there are a lot of wonderful book clubs out there providing enduring and supportive friendship and inspiration. So blog reader, if you thought book clubs were just a group of folks meeting to discuss a book, think again… many times they can evolve into a lot more.