This He said what? No, he did not! blog is written to amuse, entertain, inform, and keep me from ulcers. After all, no matter what the girl says, a Southern woman always has an opinion. Mine are liberal and forgiving, funny and full of optimism. I wander across a variety of topic landscapes including, but not limited to: trumpism, writing, reading, swimming, bridge, families, horses, grandchildren, Ashland High School Class of 1964, University of Kentucky Wildcats,  and religion. Your opinions, if expressed nicely, are welcome too. Leave a comment below.

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He said what?
Oh, no he did not!

​“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old Chinese proverb.
 
And we do, alas.
 
The heroine of my new novella, The Yellow Fever Revenge, could relate to what we are enduring today.

​In the summer of 1878, Elizabeth McAlister lives in Memphis as yellow fever marches up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. She survived an outbreak years ago that killed most of her family. 
 
In the midst of this rumored epidemic she learns her rapist, the father of her toddler son, is in Memphis with his wife and son. Before yellow fever can get him, Elizabeth plans to kill the beast.
 
The story of the Memphis epidemic, which killed 5,000 people and emptied the city of more than half its population, is one for our Coronavirus  outbreak times. For Memphis, the plague was its defining moment—a tragedy which, one can argue, it has yet to recover from.
 
Right now living in boring times seems pretty good to me — doing ho-hum routine things like grocery shopping, swimming with my friends in water aerobic classes, playing bridge and going to church. And how I miss my second grade students in the Team Read program!
 
Like you, I hope, I am at home. 
 
Unlike you, I hope, I am living with a caged beast. 
 
My husband is going stir crazy. And when he’s not wiping the house down with Lysol or sanitizer, he’s bemoaning the lack of things to do. He refuses to consider emptying the attic of junk as “something to do”. 
 
His last trip to the grocery  was an epic journey which he would not let me take with him for fear I’d get sick. When he returned, he stripped to his skivvies in the closed garage and dumped his clothes in the washer just inside the house.
 
He abandoned daily weather reports for the more grisly reports on the number of coronavirus cases in our county, nation, and the world.
 
But, he  introduced me to “The Hunters” on AmazonPrime and “The Kominsky Method” on Netflix.  Then he decided we should take a book to our daughter’s house, call out to them and get to see their faces in the flesh. That was nice.

So he isn’t making me completely crazy.
 
He said I was half crazy before the virus hit.
 
 
 
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Cover design by Lynn Maples

 Thanks to the Germantown News for the nice story on “The Yellow Fever Revenge.”

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