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the latest waddle:

good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03

elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01

building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19

ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09

my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04


2001-07-23 ... 6:19 p.m.

Mimi Is Silent, Like a Peanut

OK, so I had a little cold. So I stay home from work for one day (remember?), but then I go back, because just a little sore throat isn't anything to baby oneself over, right? And then Iris calls me on Friday, and she's ever so much fun, so me and my tiny insignificant sore throat go over to her house, and we sit on the back porch and drink ice-cold cheap Pinot Blanc and talk and talk and talk, and then we go to the Pontiac Caf� (which is horrible, by the way: decent bruschetta but just about the worst of halter-topped and baseball-capped Bucktown all gathered in one place) and drink Bass and talk and talk, and then we go pick up Kat, and then we go to Lemmings and talk and talk and drink more beer and talk and talk, and sometime around midnight I'm getting a little throaty, I'm getting a little June Allyson/Lauren Bacall; and there's some weird guy who insists on addressing me as "kitten," but that's another story; and there's another weird guy who quotes Billy Joel lyrics at me in a misguided attempt at flirting, but that's yet another, even sadder, story; and by 2 am I'm getting a weird adolescent-boy break in my voice; and I go home and go to sleep and the next morning I cannot talk at all.

You sophisticated Diaryland folks probably get laryngitis all the time (as it is the disease of sophisticates, didn't you know?) but this is new to me. I have not been able to speak above a whisper since Saturday morning. Today I went back to work, and I had to put a sign up on my office door asking people to communicate with me through e-mail only, and I had to have someone else record a voice mail message on my phone asking authors and remote editors to please e-mail me instead, and when I went to go buy a sandwich at lunch I had to write my order out on an index card like a sad little Mute Match Girl. We had to cancel dinner plans we had for tonight (LT called and gave the other couple the option of coming anyway, but they said, "No point in hanging with Mimi if you don't get the benefit of her witty banter," which in a way makes me sad that the Fun of Me is all wrapped up in words, but in another way makes me pleased that I am not merely a decorative bibelot).

Anyway. This is getting old. It was briefly fun to practice my mime/charades skills, and LT has had fun speaking "for" me like a ventriloquist (wasn't there a Lucy episode about laryngitis? My life is one big clich�), but now it is getting old. Under duress, I went to the doctor today, and it is just as I thought: complete voice rest, hot liquids, and aspirin. Not rock and roll screaming, sweet cool beer, and barbiturates. Fuck.

Fortunately (unfortunately), most of my job (the editing part) can be performed in silence. For instance, I am right now editing something about liver transplantation, and it repeatedly contains the phrase that some patients "died of rejection." Now of course I know and you know what the authors mean by that. But doesn't it sound amusingly Morrissey-esque (Morrissean?) "I don't mind...I don't mind if you reject me...or my liver..."

---mimi "harpo marx" smartypants

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