I’m still running a temperature, though not as high as yesterday and this morning. My bones ache and I still feel like I have bands of steel making it painful to take deep breaths.  The thing is, tomorrow night, whatever it takes, I’m taking my girl María to a Juanes concert–her birthday present.

He’s sort of a pop singer, sort of a roquero, and he is from Colombia. It will be loud and raucous and a good gift for my woman-child who inhabits little pieces of the world we call normal. Juanes won my heart with a very moving song he wrote during the time last decade when my country of birth became a hell of land mines. He performed Piedras Minas during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 2007. And he also has fun and silly songs. I hope it is an evening filled with squeals and all the other things that go with a concert. I am prepared–bright pink ear plugs and my iPhone virtual Zippo– the classic one. Now pray for me, a sinner–you have no idea how much I`m having to buck myself up to go to that concert given how I’m feeling.