Love Letters
While it was nothing but an unmitigated pleasure and a true delight to spend 15 minutes with each of you locked in a tiny exam room listening with rapt attention to the particulars of your sputum (purulent), your body aches (extreme) and your fevers (impressive), I'd have really preferred that you'd kept your mask (kindly provided and requested to be keep in place by our friendly and courteous reception staff) on rather than removing it as soon as the nurse was out of the room. Your well-meant touch of asking me why doctors don't get sick was so very humorous that we both laughed heartily, especially after I replied that I was just getting over my 8th bout of illness since October and then stared pointedly at your pointless mask, dangling from it's elastic band at the level of your sternum.
When I next get a bout of severely unpleasant gastroenteritis, I shall be sure to have you over to share a piece of cake and drink out of the same cup of friendship.
Big, wet smooches!
Diana
(You know, that lady doctor)
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Dearest Neighbor Steve,
You are the bestest neighbor anyone could have and have such a nice large pack of dogs. While we all think Bad Dog Bailey is a sweetheart (well, except Molly-dog, who hates her with the fire of 1000 suns), we think she's more of a sweetheart when she's in her own yard (about 200m away as the dog runs, and runs she does, through the tick-infested tall grass that separates our lands) and not making Molly throw herself against the windows with alarming violence and much spittle. It is also less than joyful when we let said Molly out to relieve herself (after carefully going out ourselves to scout for any wandering canines that would tempt her to badness in the bitter cold), only to have Bad Dog Bailey come trotting from around the side of our house as soon as Molly is let loose. After a half an hour of me trying to get now Bad Dog Molly to get the hell into the house, I am forced to give up and return to warmth and light. Sorry And Frozen And Oh-So-Hungry Dog Molly does finally agree to come in, an hour later.
Please don't take it as anything but a gesture of good will when you see the unsightly high cement wall that we've constructed along our shared property line that is topped with broken glass and razor wire. Good fences and good neighbors and all that.
As you've already lost one lovely pup in your growing pack to a passing car (Poor Maisy, we hardly knew her), we've made a deal with our florist so that for every 5th bouquet of dead-dog lillies we send to you, we get a 6th free! So, that's good, yes?
Yours in Dogginess,
Diana
(You know, the one married to Charles, the mother of your son's friend, the one you studiously ignore when in company together?)
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Dear Mad-Kitty,
While I think you are the world's best cat and find most of your antics hilarious, (like the one where you jump out and grab me from behind, around the knee and then skitter off, leaving me to pick myself and whatever I had in my arms up from off the floor, you little dickens) this does not mean that you get to be pissy when, unbeknown to me, you've chosen to bury yourself under Sara's bedclothes and then are launched into the air in the middle of a nap, when I go in to turn down her covers. Your pointing out that you clearly make a (very small) lump in the rumpled bed does not bear weight in this circumstance. You are roughly the size of any one of the 107 dolls and stuffed animals that inhabit her bed and are indispensable to her peaceful slumbers.
If you choose to lurk and nap thus, you will be unceremoniously tossed, again and again.
Yours in fond nappage,
Diana
(You know, the one who feeds you and makes the bed all warm for you.)
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Dear Driver of a Subcompact Last Night,
Hello!
Let me introduce myself. I am the white knuckled driver of the large minivan, driving home last night in the snowstorm at dusk. There was no one behind me, nor anyone in the approaching two lanes of the highway when you, coming out of the side street as the highway passed through your small Wisconsin town, pulled out right in front of me.
Whee! Wasn't that fun! We nearly collided! I nearly slid into the median as I cursed loudly and tapped the breaks as hard as I dared, fishtailing away! Such a hoot! I know you were just being neighborly and, as I've memorized your license plate, and it's a very small world, not to mention a very small town, I'm sure you won't take it amiss if I flick a lighted cigarette in your window next summer. I don't smoke, but after last night, I felt compelled to start.
Yours in future emphysematous rapture,
Diana
(You know, the one driving the fishtailing minivan, wishing for a third hand, so she could have waved a middle finger at you without taking the necessary two hands off the wheel last night.)
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Now where's the damn stamps?
Labels: In My Spare Time