I’m not going home today. Fortunately, we’re having rotini with meat sauce for dinner.

Good afternoon, boys and girls. I’m still writing from the second floor (room 204, specifically) of Baylor Hospital in Sunnyvale, Texas, where I’ve been recovering from a variety of ailments since early Sunday morning when I arrived here via ambulance. The official diagnosis has been congestive heart failure (which I already knew I had) combined with a very high fever from a resurgence of a stubborn urinary tract infection. If that’s too much information you’ll just have to deal with it.

I had been hoping to go home today, but that’s not going to happen. Sam and I were both disappointed to hear that. But since it’s almost 4:30 p.m. and I have Turner Classic Movies and my new MacBook Pro laptop to keep me company, I can amuse myself on the Internet and watch Humphrey Bogart at the same time. Plus I get dinner in bed! Tonight’s feast is rotini with meat sauce. To tell you the truth, though, I’d rather have egg foo young.

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I need a distraction from failing I.V.s, collapsed veins and catheters. All I can think of is ... Let’s Learn Yiddish! Here are today’s vocabulary words.

We’ll begin today with farmisht, which means mixed up. For instance, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I all farmisht.” Farshikert means very drunk. Farshtunkn means rotten or stinky. literally or figuratively. Farpotshket means broken because someone tried to fix it. Feh means ugh. And finally ... fleishig refers to any food that contains meat.

About half an hour ago the I.V. in my left arm stopped functioning, just like the one that collapsed in my right arm last night. The nurse hooked up my intravenous antibiotic treatment, and five minutes later there’s a cold liquid running down my arm. Thank God she was able to find another vein on the first “stick,” because my hands and arms are already covered with needle marks. We were able to finish the antibiotic treatment … now I’m waiting for someone to come in and stop the I.V. machine from beeping. It’s loud and it’s distracting. I can’t even hear the movie I’m watching on TV, an old thing with Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor Parker and Alexis Smith: The Woman in White (1948).

A SPEEDY UPDATE. Adding to my evening’s entertainment … A KIDNEY ULTRASOUND! A very sweet technician showed up with all the necessary equipment and videotaped my kidneys for about 15 minutes. I asked her for a copy on DVD. And speaking of DVDs, I just ordered Storm in a Teacup (1937) from Amazon, an adorable movie starring Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison. Even better, tonight on TCM I get to watch The Graduate (1967) starring Dustin Hoffman, William Daniels and Anne Bancroft, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) starring Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, Modern Times (1936) starring Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard, and The Searchers (1956) starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood. Too bad I can’t enjoy all this from Howdygram headquarters!

Thank you for reading this, and I certainly hope y’all are having a pleasant evening. Also, please do your best to remember the Alamo now and then.