This has been a miserable week. Not that anything bad happened. In fact, quite a few good things happened. But I've been sick and when I'm sick... I'm sick.
My cold and congestion began on Saturday. Sunday it got worse. Monday I was in the office and coughed quite a bit. Tuesday I coughed so hard I threw my back into spasm so that every subsequent coughing fit needed to be braced and standing up became a challenge. Mucinex, naproxin, and a Z-Pack from the doctor and I'm on the mend, but it's been a miserable week.
Which brings me to one of my wife's most important rules: At dinner parties in our home, we aging baby boomers have ten minutes--that's ten minutes total, not ten minutes each--to discuss the random aches and pains that are part of growing older. Big problems, such as helping a friend deal with her breast cancer, can be the topic of the night, but for the regular, run-of-the-mill stuff: You (plural) have ten minutes.
It's a great rule and she enforces it. More than once I've hear her say to a group of our friends, "Enough about our health. Let's change the subject." Not particularly subtle, but quite effective.
Two take aways. First, have more dinner parties. They don't need to be elaborate or large. One or two couples for simple fare and good wine is all that's required.
Second, adopt and enforce the ten minute rule. Get over the fact that coffee suddenly gives you dyspepsia or that your knee hurts when you do this and move on to religion and politics, arts and letters, or just about anything else. There are so many things about us and our fascinating friends that are not falling apart. Why dwell on the things that are?
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