There are many benefits for me in being laid up for a couple of weeks. A good friend just bought me a $100 gift certificate to Battenkill Books, she wanted me to make sure I had enough to read during my rehabilitation and recovery.

I told Connie Brooks at the bookstore I wanted to string the gift out and not waste all of it now. Other friends have e-mailed me books from Amazon and one I pre-ordered a couple of months ago and it just came. Maria is especially kind to me (most of the time) and feeds me the food that I love and does the appropriate fussing.

I have time to meditate, write, and learn. I’m bonding with my Leica, the most wonderful camera I’ve ever owned.

I just went up to say hello to the Miller family and I got a joyous and warm welcome that touched my heart. We missed one another. It didn’t hurt that I had a huge bag of Hershey Bars, they gobble them up for energy and for hospitality. The Amish work hard and they love their sweet stuff. More about that later. It had a very special reunion feeling.

I have one more week of forced rest and I’m going to plow through these three very exciting books. I overdid it today, throwing the ball for Zinnia and Fate while Maria was out walking with a friend. She may just kill me unless I don’t tell her and the dogs stop panting.

Invisible Child already seems like a masterpiece to me, and I’m only 100 books into it. It may be the best reported and most powerful non-fiction book I have ever read. It’s by Andrea Eliot, a member of the New York Times Investigative Unit, I will be up late at night this week finishing it.

A funner and lighter book is Less by Andrean Sean Green I skimmed the first chapter, it’s a riot, a hilarious lampooning of the literary world, a book to make people think and laugh. It won a Pulitzer Prize. And I got a hot new mystery – Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara. It was inspired by the internment of Japanese people during World War II. I’m starting with the Eliot book and working my way through it.

All this reading is not normally possible for me. I do my best reading late at night while everyone else is sleeping. Me and my apnea mask, my new friend. I’m counting my blessings.