Day four of spending most of my time flat on my back, taking methylpred to reduce the inflammation, and popping pain killers. Yesterday, Clara bought me a "memory foam" pillow, which makes things just a little more comfortable. The pain is a little less, but my right arm is still numb and pretty useless. Keeping up with the flossing has been a real challenge. Most of all, I'm bored and tired of being in constant pain.

I've used the time in bed to read. I quickly devoured Rumer Godden's lovely children's novel The Diddakoi, about a seven-year old gypsy girl who is left orphaned and has to learn to live with non-gypsies. And the non-gypsies, in turn, have to learn to live with her. It's beautifully done, especially because Kizzy, the little girl, is an authentically willful and sometimes naughty seven-year old, but she's also endearing and completely sympathetic. The novel won the Whitbread Award in 1972. Now I'm a little more than half-way through Dorothy Canfield's The Brimming Cup, which was the second bestselling novel of 1921, after Sinclair Lewis's Main Street.

It looks like my pain in the neck will keep me from attending tonight's annual meeting of Northfield.org and officially taking my place on the board, but I hope to pull myself together long enough to read a couple of poems tomorrow night at the "Winter Words" Writers' Night at the Northfield Arts Guild. 7:00 p.m., upstairs at the downtown arts guild building.