At 3:00 a..m. I quit trying to sleep and started reading yet another moderately well-written police procedural.

At 6:00 a.m. I got out of bed, threw away the cough-drop wrappers from the last hour, and went downstairs to let the dog outside.

At 7:00 a.m. I made a pot of coffee and heated a gluten-free muffin.

At 8:00 a.m. I discovered my entire webhost to be nonfunctional, and cruised over to my substitute political blog to express my concern about #45’s latest insistence that women toe the line.

At 9:00 a.m. I threw my back out and started to whimper, clutching the kitchen counter and cursing  everybody who had ever failed to keep their promises to me, along with every single inadequate inanimate object in my home, including some cheap toothbrushes that keep shedding bristles into my mouth.

By 11:00 a.m. I had taken four extra-strength Tylenol; chewed 4000 mgs. of Vitamin C; drunk three 8-oz glasses of water; and systematically dismantled the logic of every major decision that I made in my entire miserable life.

I fell asleep at noon and woke up 33 minutes later coughing so hard that I think the neighbors might have called 911.

In the five hours since then, I’ve finished a third crime novel; gotten into a spitting match with a Republican friend of my oldest sister; had a text-to-text conversation with no less than two people worried about me; read ten e-mails praising my most recent blog post; and polished off a half-carton of left-over gluten-free pasta with dairy-free sauce.

Along the way, I decided that I did the stages of grief backwards; that I own too many clothes; that my dog needs a bath; and that I’m not as good of a lawyer as I had thought but I’m not as bad as I feared.

I also discovered that a lot of people read my blogs and some of them even like what I write.

I’ve got a bag full of Vitamin C lozenges and a cup full of ice next to me.  It’s evening on the fifth day of the thirty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.