Letters from my sick bed

Dear Judy P.,

It's day three of my cold.  What day is it for you? I think you have the advantage of me, because you are in Hawaii and I'm not.  If I were there, we could boot Lorin into some other room and share a sick bed.  We'd spread used Kleenex on the bedspread like white petunias.  Hannah would be happy to bring us coconut smoothies, wouldn't she?

Can you believe how much snot one head can release?  There's nothing "common" about a cold.

Dear Peggy,

Remember how I wouldn't let you eat a brownie at Ken Cannon's birthday party?  "You have diabetes," I said, high minded. "Do you want to have your foot cut off?"

I worry about having a kind, stable friend like you, who seems so calm in the face of tyranny.  Don't you just want to smack me around sometimes?

Anyway, the blood results of my physical exam came back and I am now prediabetic.  I gave the rest of the Girls' Scouts mint cookies away and bought a stationary bike.  I am changing my ways.

Really.

I think the tyranny will probably continue.

Dear Dr. Westermann,

I said only the men in my family get diabetes, not the women. Oops.

Dear Tom,

I think we should get married for the grandchildren's sake.

Dear Bonnie W. and Lisa P.

It is oxymoronic to give a large inn in Maine to the writer who can best describe why she wants said inn in 200 words or less.  The best excuse for not writing anything at all is running an inn.  People who run inns actually like people.  They like cooking and fixing people's little problems, and hiring help, and placing Belgian chocolates on people's pillows, rather than devouring them themselves.

Once, when we were young, Tom wanted to buy an inn in northern Minnesota and give up his life as a German Professor.  I didn't marry him, so I could be an innkeeper.  No. No. No.  That same summer, he also wanted to buy an ice cream parlor on Lake Superior.  An ice cream parlor in northern Minnesota?  He really was a mad hatter. Actually, we were both mad hatters.  And yet, the children turned out anyway.

Enter the inn contest yourselves.  You both write as well as I do.  I'll be happy to visit.