{"id":23702,"date":"2019-04-09T09:14:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T16:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23702"},"modified":"2019-04-10T09:19:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T16:19:17","slug":"tuesday-bag-o-tissues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23702","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Bag o’ Tissues"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_4293\"<\/a>A bad cold was overdue:\u00a0it’s been two years, maybe three. Last week it was a runny, drippy nose, which I chalked up to springtime pollen and combatted with Claritin. But yesterday, riding to Pima Air and Space Museum<\/a>, I\u00a0realized it had progressed beyond\u00a0hay fever. The clear watery stuff that had been dripping from my nose was now thick and yellow. My head was\u00a0stuffed, my brain felt disconnected, my throat was painfully sore, and even riding the motorcycle to work couldn’t cheer me up.<\/p>\n

Halfway through\u00a0the first tram tour my voice went on strike. And so, for the first time in the eight years I’ve been volunteering at PASM, I\u00a0bailed on my co-volunteers and went home. Now\u00a0it’s pseudoephedrine and Afrin, frequent naps, and gallons of water. That’s a selfie I took yesterday just before loading passengers, practicing my “Why no, I’m not sick” face.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Air Force issued Afrin to\u00a0aircrews as an emergency measure to clear our ears and sinuses during descents from high altitude. Normally you never used the stuff, equalizing\u00a0pressure inside your head\u00a0instead by doing valsalva maneuvers. They always cautioned us not to use Afrin unless absolutely necessary, since after only a few uses the soft tissue in your sinuses expands and now you’re in a world of hurt. But I’m old now, and grounded, and\u00a0will take my chances with the side effects.<\/p>\n

Well, enough about that.<\/p>\n

I exchange letters with a friend in Virginia. He writes his longhand, using a fountain pen. Writing by hand has always been a struggle for me, so I type mine\u00a0on the desktop and print them. I remembered my father giving me a gold Cross fountain pen several years back and with surprisingly little effort found it. I remembered also a note Dad\u00a0included\u00a0with the pen, and happily it was still in the case, neatly folded and dated\u00a0“Christmas, 1990”:<\/p>\n

Upon graduation from college the Caldwells [my mom\u2019s parents] presented me with a pen and pencil set. At the time I remember thinking that I could have used the gift while I was still in college instead of afterwards. I am surprised at how much I used that set \u2013 the pencil no longer works but I still keep it. The pen has had some repairs over the years but it still serves me faithfully \u2013 it lies within reach on my desk and I use it several times a week. Inasmuch as I love my pen, I thought you might like to have a fountain pen too. Of course a fountain pen isn\u2019t nearly as functional or versatile or convenient as a ball point \u2013 a fountain pen is sometimes messy and bothersome when you have to fill it \u2013 they aren\u2019t much good for carbons either. Be that as it may, you (as a literary man) know that a fountain pen is civilized and has a cachet that a ball point will never have. I hope this gift brings you years of service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u00a0must have used the pen\u00a0a few times. I say so because the pen came with six ink cartridges and one is missing (the others long since dried up). There’s also what\u00a0Cross calls a converter, a different\u00a0type of cartridge\u00a0you dip into a bottle of ink and fill by twisting the other end. I resolved to, if not write an entire letter with the pen, at least use it to sign future letters, and ordered new cartridges and a bottle of ink from Amazon. They came last night and I’ll\u00a0practice\u00a0fountain-penmanship later today.<\/p>\n

Long before my friend and I\u00a0began exchanging letters, my Dad and I were regular correspondents. From the time I married and left home until his death in 2007, we exchanged letters at least monthly, sometimes more often than that. I saved all the letters he wrote to me, and he saved all my letters to him. I have them all now. Blogging is an extension of\u00a0my lifelong\u00a0habit of letter-writing,\u00a0but I’m thankful\u00a0there’s\u00a0at least one friend today\u00a0with whom I can\u00a0exchange actual,\u00a0old-fashioned letters.<\/p>\n

More on writing: my Paulgrams<\/a>, little newsletters delivered to subscribers by email. I haven’t written one in a long time, and\u00a0every time I try to start a new one I ask myself why I’m doing it. I blog fairly regularly, after all, and what do those Paulgrams have to say that isn’t already here on Paul’s Thing? Up in the air for now, those Paulgrams.<\/p>\n

My job today is to get better. Gotta go work on that. More soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Halfway through the first tram tour I lost my voice. And so, for the first time in the eight years I’ve been volunteering at PASM, I bailed on my co-volunteers and went home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2723,2722,911,669],"class_list":["post-23702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-letters","tag-selfmedicating","tag-cold","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23702"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23712,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23702\/revisions\/23712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}