Kat does not like it when I am sick. She hates it even more when I really am recovering. She swears that recovering makes me giddy and crazy. Me, I prefer the words �relieved,� �fun-filled,� and �zany.� The worst problem�from her perspective�comes when Mr. Philately joins me in my newly-healthy and offbeat world which he is most likely to do when Day-Hay is not around. Day-Hay, you see, can truly be silenced by the glory that is us on such occasions. But Kat is fun to heckle.

Tonight poor Kat tried to relate the plot of �As You Like It� to her father�with running commentary from her mother. (Lucky girl. Not everyone has such help in relating a story.) Kat gamely began explaining about the rightful duke having been overthrown and going off to the forest. Rightful duke? Did she say �duke?� I could have sworn she was talking about a �dude.� That�s right, a righteous dude, probably related to the Righteous Brothers although perhaps he was left in the forest because he could not carry a tune.

AS SHE WAS SAYING, there also was a guy named Orlando... �Hey, he wasn�t from Florida by any chance was he?� began her father who now was lost in the strange world of the recovering Plankton. ...who lost out due to primogeniture... �Primo who? Is he related to a Prima Ballerina? And what about this geniture stuff? Should they be teaching that in the public schools?�

ANYWAY, Orlando blew into town and encountered Rosalind, who was the daughter of the Righteous Dude who was off playing Robin Hood. He also encountered some wrestler who wanted to kill him, not the Righteous Dude, the Florida guy, but didn�t succeed because apparently being around Goofy and Mickey all day makes guys with no primogeniture rights tough.

MOTHER, PLEEEEEASE (or something less polite and not quite ready for the younger internet viewers).....The usurper (which is a step up from being a burper which far too many men are) kicks out Rosalind and Rosalind�s cousin, the daughter of the usurper, goes off with her. Rosalind apparently gets the idea that two women wandering around in a forest with sheep in it (sheep?) and a goatherd (goats? in the forest?) and Righteous Dude and a bunch of guys in tights playing Robin Hood is not a good idea. Besides, she�s tired of wearing long skirts and thinks that long legs are best shown off in pants�or the guy that�s playing her is tired of dressing like a girl and wants a chance to dress like a proper guy (in tights) so she pretends to be her cousin�s brother and does such a good job of it that the shepherd�s girl falls in love with her. (But then again, maybe anything looks better than the boy who spends his whole day with the sheep and, like a good Elizabethan does not take a bath.)

I�M GOING TO FINISH NO MATTER WHAT....So the Floridian gets lovesick like only a mopey teenage boy can and puts up love notes all over the forest for Rosalind. She, being a teenage girl just can�t resist torturing him. (AND I GET TO PLAY THAT PART, DAD!!!!!!!!!) So, of course, she does by making fun of him and his love poems and his love life and anything else she can think of (which is why, perhaps, she is worthy of being a true Shakespearian heroine.)

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT (or put me out of my misery whichever comes first)....Everybody ends up getting married to someone except for the Righteous Dude and Orlando�s middle brother Jaques who apparently exists solely so that he can be a grump and tell people that all the world is a stage. Or, in other words, maybe this IS a tragedy after all except that no one ends up as dead as Hamlet. Not even close. They are not even as dead as Hamlet�s father who, although dead, sure manages to make an entrance.

SIGH.

I really don�t know why my daughter doesn�t talk to us more.

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