Made a budget for the next six months, just a spreadsheet with what's coming in and what's going out. Making a list of medical bills and plugging them into their cells. There will be enough left over for rent, there will be enough left over for food and an occasional slice of pizza at the place down the street. Breakfast at the Mediterraneum on Saturday and Sunday. Life is good, having been through this patch under other circumstances.

I read a book once many years back called Voltaire In Love by Nancy Mitford. The one thing I remember from the book was the description of Voltaire and his wife living outside of Paris, each with their own room in which they undertook their studies and "experiments". The scene was idyllic, two people puttering around with their hobbies, I guess, although you don't think of Voltaire's bumblings in the sense of a hobby. Today it might be two people humming away in their "work" room with their computers, writing, drawing, reading, building models, munching on Macaroons. I'm sitting here munching on Macaroons in my way, feeling content. A sign of domestic bliss. Isn't it nauseating?

I'm still taking this recuperation an hour or a morning or an afternoon at a time. I feel better, I'm sleeping reasonably well, although I do wake up at 5:00, take a slug of pain killer for the gums and the mouth, take a bath and, this morning, go out and buy groceries for next week through Thursday: Six 6-packs of Ensure (recommended by doctors!), five or six cans a day, for seven days, V8 Juice, orange juice and bottled water. The doctor said to hold the weight loss to ten pounds, let this thing heal it isn't a diet, and that's fine. The ten pounds is long gone, but I'll hold it where it is right now (chuff! chuff!). Hard to hold your weight on tomato juice, but what the hell, I'm feeling good, pass the tubes and medications.