LIFE, DEATH, AND CHICKEN SOUP
To achieve LIFE
and to avoid DEATH
the only sure-fire answer: CHICKEN SOUP. Read on.
SIGNS OF LIFE
This is the killer cold of 2004. Still coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and so forth. Throat remains sore, nose, ears, head stuffed. The cough has become, ahem, more productive, but that just makes for an increased need for more tissues and hacking into them.
Survival is, indeed, a possibility. In fact, it may actually loom in close proximity.
Yes, I may live: Susan came over on Friday and brought me chicken soup [1], the Jewish Penicillin [2]. The good doctor/alchemist Susan also came armed with Motzah Balls, some Matjes Herring, White Anchovies, and other such goodies available and that she procured at the wonderful Deli known as Sable's [3], on the Upper East Side of NYC.
Sables is owned by a Chinese fellow who was formerly the top appetizer maven [4] at Zabar's [5], over on the West Side. To many, Zabar's [6] is actually heaven, given the quality, choice, and freshness of the lox [7] sold there.
Of course, Sable's, with the same supplier [8] as Zabar, is a better deal for price. Maybe these days Zabar's is a little heavier on the kitsch than the kitchen, but it remains a reliable (if gigantic) source of all that good stuff. To me, Sable's [9] is far and away a better place for overall quality, price, service, and ambience.
Three straight days of Chicken Soup
About that Chicken Soup [10]... Susan should have wheeled it here, but, trooper that she is, she carried it in store-type tupperware containers, protected by canvas bags. After three straight days of consuming it, there are signs of life.
Any doubts that chicken soup is restorative are quelled here [11]. Yes, that's scientific evidence. So, should you be so unlucky as to end up with a cold such as the one that's all but killed me, either get some home-made chicken soup [10], find a place like Sable's and buy some, or brave the symptoms and make it yourself.
Or, better yet, be lucky enough to have someone as caring (and strong enough to lug it) as Susan, to bring it to you.
E-MAIL AFTERMATH
Other than a few very urgent business and family e-mails, most of what's hit my inbox in the past week has remained there, unanswered. Provided there's no relapse, or just death from coughing, sneezing, hacking, itching and aching, I promise to answer all the accumulating e-mail, sooner or later. Same goes for all those telephone messages piling up. When one has no voice, the less time spent on the phone, the better.
Even preparing this blog entry took more time than a healthy person would ever spend on such a diversion.
TRUE MEASURES
How sick have I been? So much so that I've dozed off during Yankee games, didn't peruse the usual daily look-see sites and blogs, and almost forgot to do the Sunday Times Crossword puzzle. And that took about twice the usual time to complete . . . all due to my headache, et al, not any reflection on the challenge of the puzzle. Actually, given the Sunday Times Crossword Puzzle of late, maybe challenge is the wrong word. The Friday and Saturday puzzles in the Times are consistently a better exercise.
I can say this, though: even composing this blog entry, I am struggling for the proper words to use in various sentences, and it feels like I am coming up short. Forgive me, my brain has been rotting while the cold takes its toll. Hopefully cognitive abilities, vocabulary, memory, and acuity of wit, mind, and senses will return.
IF NOT
Should all this not abate, the symptoms rage on, and I proceed toward the end of the roadÖ
Well, then, this will become the deathblog, as long as I can type. And if I can provide an answer to the most important of all questions, you will be sure to read it here first. What question, you ask? Simple: is there Chicken Soup on the Other Side? Of course, that presupposes the answer to the second most important question: Is there another side?
I would never keep info like that a secret from readers of DeanLand [12]. Rest assured. Or in peace, as fate might have it.