690. No chest pain

70 Replies

690pork

Libby had just picked her husband, Jonathan, up from the hospital. He’d been there for “more than a few days” for a rather serious operation. It’s amazing what medical science can do these days. The surgeon (he was from the Middle East; hospitals are such cosmopolitan places!) had replaced one of Jonathan’s heart valves with a pig’s valve. They can do it! They did it! Jonathan was feeling a box of birds!

The thing he most looked forward to was a decent meal. Not that there was anything wrong with the hospital food. It was quite alright. But Libby’s home cooking was much nicer. It was so carefully prepared, so tasty. And of course, being at home, the meal could be eaten leisurely in familiar surroundings without everyone looking. How tired he was of eating from a tray!
And how wonderful it will be, with his brand new pig’s valve, to eat without chest pain!

“So what’s for dinner?” asked Jonathan.

“Roast pork,” said Libby. “The surgeon gave it to me. He said there was quite a lot of pork left over.”

70 thoughts on “690. No chest pain”

        2. Oscar Alejandro Plascencia

          Yes. Only the elite got their ears full. I think that’s his new strategy to give early bird prizes in the form of audio samplings. Then remove the recordings when he’s reached his desired stats! The rascal! I’m always a day behind. Gotta move to the Southern Hemisphere!

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        3. Bruce Goodman Post author

          I took the audio down because it was “effing awful”!! I am starting again tomorrow – except I am laughing in the middle of it, which is highly “unprofessional” but my blog is not professional so it doesn’t matter.

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      3. wolfberryknits

        Just read all those comments, I truly hope you stay well and happy for many many more years to come! Your writing and your life is really inspirational. I understand the burnout even after only 8 months doing it, if I feel pressure to blog or to comment or to be nice to people my brain shuts down. I am learning to ride the feeling of inspired action when it comes, and forget it when it doesn’t. Just in case you choose to disappear, I wanted to tell you how much I am enjoying “A Passing Shower”. I wish you wrote more novels!

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        1. Bruce Goodman Post author

          Thanks for that. You’re the first person EVER to say they are enjoying my novel!!!! In fact, as far as I know you are the first person ever to say they are reading it!!! I would write lots more novels if only one person finished it and said they liked it! Thanks again for the comment. I’m not having a very good day and think I’m disgruntling everyone – so had better shut up.

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  4. Cynthia Jobin

    This is a well-wrought tale, Bruce, from start to finish. I did get the Middle East reference, and I do know, from experience, how one might see nirvana as getting away from hospital food. You built that well. (I know someone who acquired a cow valve under similar circumstances.) But the Roast Pork was still a surprise, and very funny….LOL funny. I’m very happy to have heard you read the story in your own voice, before you chickened out and deleted it.

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    1. Bruce Goodman Post author

      The problem was, I had to whisper it into the microphone early this morning so as not to wake people up. So starting tomorrow I’ll start reading things – at least for a few days – and especially tomorrow’s poem which was originally called “Sprung Rhythm” and I want people to hear where the beats fall. It’s now called “They upped and left” but it’s kind of like the second line of “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe”, i.e. “She had so many children she didn’t know what to do…” Any way – I’m currently not in too much of an excellent space. I think I need a break away from the blog. Last time that happened I deleted the entire two years of blogging with the flick of the wrist and 6 months later spent two month trying to get bits of it back again! 😀

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      1. redosue

        Hmmm. Interesting comment about the blogging burn out. There seems to be an epidemic of that among the bloggers I’m following. I hope I’m not a carrier. Anyway, do hope you just take a break and don’t disappear altogether.

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            1. Bruce Goodman Post author

              Not at all! I was worried that I might get hospitalised (as I need a heart transplant) and wanted to be enough ahead without doing things during the recuperation time! However, they’ve given up on doing it so the stories are still there!

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              1. redosue

                Oh my gosh, Bruce, I hope they’ve given up because you’re better.

                I admire your font of stories. I usually have to force myself to sit down in front of the computer screen and bang my head on the table before anything dribbles out.

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                1. Bruce Goodman Post author

                  In the shower is when I have thoughts (for the stories) and also driving the car and lying in bed after waking up and right slap-bang while I’m half way through eating dinner!

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        1. Bruce Goodman Post author

          I used to write whole books and after the first rejection from a publish I would throw the hard copy in the fire and press delete on the computer! (These days I back up just in case as I’m getting too old!)

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            1. Bruce Goodman Post author

              I seemed to go through life with publishers who “had another agenda” – like “they had a sister who had written on the same theme and they were going to publish hers” or “Oh no! Not another bloody catholic.”

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  5. Cynthia Jobin

    Be gentle, and back away slowly. The French have a saying: “Reculer pour mieux sauter”which amounts to saying you have to back-up to jump further. I am in a similar un-excellent space,… and holding. There’s something about the whole internet-blogging scene that is mysteriously addicting in both a good and not-so-good way. I know, in my solitudinous life, that I enjoy being able to jaw daily with friends, that it’s a good thing, and yet there is the pressure of posting—which I finally relieved myself of doing, except on a schedule that made sense for my life and my poems. (Daily posts, I think, are hard on writers…. and readers!)What does taking a break mean? I’m trying to figure that out for myself just now. 🙂

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    1. Bruce Goodman Post author

      I see some of the best bloggers crumble – as Susanne says too in her comment – and they go out into the garden or get into house renovation or fall out of their tree altogether. Personally I don’t have trouble with the posting pressure (I think the occasional story can afford to be bad but a poem can’t!) but I don’t cope too well with having to be nice to so many people all at once! Reductio ad absurdum seems to be the easiest manner of survival! – or at least Reductio ad pun!

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  8. Cynthia Jobin

    And I’m sorry, too…..for all the times you had to be nice to me, and all the reductios to absurdity and puns. When it comes to blogging, reciprocity is the magic word, I believe, and when that is not there, we must throw in the towel.

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    1. Bruce Goodman Post author

      Eke! I didn’t mean YOU!!! I meant ME!!! It’s what I seem to spend most of my time doing online… instead of thinking of something sensible to say I automatically start looking for something silly to say…

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  10. Oscar Alejandro Plascencia

    LOL. GREAT YARN BRUCE! Coincidently I was just giving my three-year-old grand-niece a lesson in life this morning at the breakfast table when she refused to eat her scrambled eggs because her teacher said they came from hens. So as she stuffed her mouth with strip after strip of crispy bacon, I asked if she knew where bacon came from. We couldn’t stop the tears (hers literally, ours from laughter) when I told her she was eating her favorite cartoon, “Peppa Pig”.

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  11. thecontentedcrafter

    Good heavens Bruce – I stop by first thing in the morning and come back mid afternoon to find you having a life/blogging [are they the same I wonder?] crisis and threatening to delete everything in sight ……. Nooooooooooooooooooo!! I’m about to start reading your novel – Bianca told me about it – you had never mentioned it! Everyone on my blog who read your autobiography loved it [I think all two or possibly three of us] And I’m sure others will follow the link and read it too. You are such a great writer and if you are a little curmudgeonly around folk that is perfectly okay isn’t it if you are a great writer especially. [I’m not saying you ARE curmudgeonly, only if you want to be curmudgeonly be curmudgeonly] Just don’t stop writing!!

    I think curmudgeonly is my favourite word of the day for today! 🙂

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