The basement is still full of post-Sandy flood water, though my rigged-up garden-hose siphon seems to be working, albeit slowly. Ergo, I'll be spending some time in the laundromat. In other tedious news, along with 1,733 other people, I didn't get an NEA grant this year. I did, however, get a busted snow tire. [Cue heavy sigh here.]

But before I become entrenched and unreasonable, I will quickly transfer this brow-mopping and hand-wringing to some chronicler from the past and let her do the tragicomic moaning.

From a letter to Mrs. Russell from Jane Welsh Carlyle, 23 February 1862

The longer I live, the more I am certified that men, in all that relates to their own health, have not common sense! whether it be their Pride, or their Impatience, or their Obstinacy, or their ingrained Spirit of Contradiction that stultifies and misleads them, the result is always a certain amount of idiocy or distraction, in their dealing with their own bodies! I am not generalising from my own Husband. I know that he is a quite extravagant example of that want of common sense in bodily matters, which I complain of. Few men (even) are so lost to themselves as to dry their soaked trousers on their legs! (as he does) or swallow five grains of mercury in the middle of the day, and then walk or ride three hours under a plunge of rain! (as he does) &c. &c. But men generally--all of them I have ever had to do with--even your sensible Husband included you see!--drive the poor women, who care for them to despair, either by their wild impatience of bodily suffering, and the exaggerated moan they make over it, or else by their reckless defiance of it, and neglect of every dictate of Prudence.

Come on, isn't that funniest sad-but-true thing you've read all day? Of course for balance we ought to have a "women, you can't live with them, you can't live without them" rebuttal from Mr. Carlyle. I'll keep my eye out for his side of the story.