Sick as a dog

I guess I'm a disease snob. I get big things -- like metastatic breast cancer which metastasizes to almost every bone in my body and then invades the liver -- the sort of disease that makes experienced oncologists think I probably won't see the end of the year because things are galloping along at full tilt and my bones have started breaking and treatment isn't working. But after almost six years of that, this week I caught ..... the COMMON COLD!!! I've never been so sick. I slept for three days, I coughed, I coughed, I coughed. I'm still coughing and I haven't been outside yet, but today I got up and dressed. I feel MUCH better, I must be getting better. I think I'll get through this one although it made me feel sicker than cancer ever did. (Uh, that might not be true, I felt pretty awful when I was first on chemo.)

Anyway, I'm moving on to my plans for the coming weeks. During the four Thursdays in December I'll be teaching arts and crafts in Juvenile Hall on a boys' housing unit where the kids are known to be particularly obnoxious. Eventually we'll get around to making Christmas cards and thinking about New Years' resolutions, but we're going to start off by making a simple two-dimensional winter village. If 15 boys make and decorate 15 buildings and I add some Christmas trees and other images, I think it will work. There's one flat surface at the front of the room (the horseshoe shaped tall staff desk) where we can stick up the display. Believe me, that room is so sterile that even our little project will add a lot of life to the unit. Here's my prototype to show to the boys to get them started.