Sunday: Lungs Acting Weird and Robinson Crusoe

Our cowboy woke up with such congested lungs and ferocious coughing that he was (and I was, too!) afraid that he was (a) going to hurl; and/or (b) not be able to get any air in, through all the congestion.

As soon as I heard his breathing, I jumped out of bed and got completely dressed to take him to the ER. But he, being the adamant, balky, bullheaded, cantankerous, contumacious, determined, dogged, hardheaded, headstrong, inexorable, inflexible, intractable, mulish, obdurate, ornery, persevering, persistent, pertinacious, pigheaded, recalcitrant, refractory, relentlessly rigid, self-willed, set in his ways, single-minded, steadfast, tenacious, unbending, unshakable, untoward cowboy that he IS, refused to go to any ER.

He is now describing his condition as merely "weak and breathless." See? He won't even help me make this post more theatrical and interesting! Weak and breathless? Welllllllll, I guess I should focus on being thankful that he didn't do either of (a) or (b) in paragraph number one, above. And has slowed down a lot on the coughing, and isn't having trouble getting air in.

He's still white as a goose, though. (Goose?)

And to try to manage my never-ending anxiety, which hums like low-level radiation inside my soul 24 hours a day, I've downloaded Robinson Crusoe onto my Kindle. I'd never read it, but in examining a book of Bill's by Wilkie Collins (Moonstone), I saw that Wilkie Collins thought Robinson Crusoe was the greatest book of all time and had read it dozens of times, for its wisdom.

What? Robinson CRUSOE?*(See Wilkie Collins quote at end of post, at asterisk)

So I'm reading Robinson Crusoe, for the FIRST time (THANKS, public education system), and indeed am severely struck with the thrilling and thought-inducing content of it--none of which I would have understood if I'd read it in third grade like I should have.

How was THAT for a digression? More about our cowboy as things develop. Love to all!
* "You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice—ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
"
— Wilkie Collins