I want my own parking space
At the emergency room. Yup, back we went. Thursday night. 8 days between ER visits...I can't recall if that's a new record or not.

My wonderful friend the incredible Finny has spent the past week waxing lyrical about her home grown goodies and her farm share crop, her general gourmetitude (complete with fabu recipes). Meanwhile, I've had Husband forcing me to eat Cup of Soup and take spoonfuls of Jell-O. (They lied, there isn't always room for Jell-O.) Oh where or where has my appetite gone, oh where, or where can it be?

In other news, this is the closing weekend of the Olympics and after watching 900 hours of coverage, and in the absence of anything of actual importance to say, i have these observations, questions, and peeves.

- How come male beach volleyball players can compete perfectly well in shorts and tank tops but female players need a bikini for full range of motion? Come on folks, talk about sexism! Either give the ladies shorts or put the guys in Speedos.

- Who decides that we need to see every frickin' point of every frickin' volleyball game by every frickin' country, but we can't spare 10 minutes of screen time for archery, shooting, judo, fencing, modern pentathalon, or various other "obscure" sports.

- The same question applies to men's basketball. We can see men's basketball 47 months a year -- we get to see archery once every four years and I think it got like 15 minutes at 3 am.

- Is anyone else sick of hearing Rhapsody in Blue in those creepily animated United Airlines commercials? The Gershwin estate has a lot to answer for.

- Bob Costas is worth every penny NBC is paying him. And the more tired he gets, the funnier he is.

- Years ago it seems Olympic coverage was padded with endless athlete profiles featuring every hardluck shot-puter whose deaf grandmother fled a locust hoard and started a roadside fruit stand in Ethiopia. Now they've gone completely the other direction and haven't bothered really to tell us about anyone. A middle ground would be nice. I don't need all the sob stories, but it would be nice to be able to recognize someone other than Michael Phelps.

- The Chinese divers are robots. Only explanation.

- Why is rhythmic gymnastics a sport and yet they're getting rid of softball. That just sucks. And BMX racing? That's what suburban kids do outside of the local Subway sandwich shop -- it's not a sport.

- Who knew there were so many things you could do on the water? Kayaking. Canoeing. Skulls. Various numbers of participants. Flat and fizzy water. The 500 meter mixed 9-men, 3-women Perrier Swan Boat obstacle course was especially interesting.

- Which brings me to the only Olympic sport I can compete in. I could be a coxswain. I could sit in a boat and yell at people while they row their guts out.

Back to bed....Cup of Soup, anyone?

Would you like fries with your bowling ball?
I'm in the "forcing myself to eat because every time I stand up I get dizzy and develop the kind of shakes that makes the neighbors think I'm on methadone" phase of recovery. Yesterday's dietary toll: one half cup dry cereal, one cup of less-than-stellar matzoh ball soup, one cup of juice. Call Jenny Craig. Yeah, that's it.

Today I daringly added milk to the cereal and had a real, old-fashioned, all-American bowl of Cheerios for breakfast.

And can I tell you that it feels like I just ate a bowling ball? No, really. I had less than a cup of cereal and about 1/4 cup of 2% milk and here I am still feeling it sitting like concrete in my not-used-to-food-at-all tummy.

I know that I have to eat. I know that my biggest problem right now is that I have absolutely no strength and feel like I'm going to faint if I do more than one thing per standing up trip. (I can get juice OR I can answer the phone. I can't do both.) But the problem is that I just have no appetite and when I do eat a little it feels like I've gorged on half a wildebeest with fries.

Oh dear, and now I need to go lay down (lie down? I never learned the rules on that one) because I am, you guessed it, too weak to be sitting up any longer.

Damn, damn, damn
Today we cancelled our grand tour. Damn.

I was so sick this weekend that the concept of being well enough to count on two weeks of good health seems impossible. The last day to cancel was upon us, and I just couldn't commit. I dreaded the thought of being offshore of some exotic port and being too sick to leave the cabin. Between my bad back and my unpredictable ability to actually eat for two whole days in a row, it just seemed like a bad idea.

The bottom line is that I wasn't looking forward to it. I was actually kind of dreading it because I kept thinking "what if I get this sick in Turkey?"

Well, at least we no longer need to stress about what we're going to do with the cat.

Damn, damn, damn.