The stars of the touring AC2 show, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, posed for Mr. Cohen’s social media outlets, and we giggled gleefully and marveled at the guns and pecs on display. Andy Cohen was a two-time Hunk of the Day, and Anderson Cooper had his Hunk crowning as well. Taken together, it’s more hunkdom than an average midday post can handle, but let’s do our best to collect ourselves. This is what the internet is really for. In these trying political times, let’s revisit why we’re all here, and this picture exemplifies that for me. Carry on, AC & AC.

Today’s dose of cute is brought to you by a real seal and a stuffed seal.

If your heart doesn’t flutter a bit at these photos, I don’t want to know you.

Everyone loved this photo when I posted it on Instagram, so here you go.

People love to see me in distress.

And in a mask, apparently.

The good news is that I don’t have strep throat and don’t have to go on antibiotics.

The bad news is that my throat still hurts.

#UrgentCareRealness

With burning throat, I will do my best to recap the past week in which sickness ravaged my middle-aged body. No one wants to hear about that, so I wrote a bunch of posts on it because that’s the miserable bitch I am when feeling unwell. You didn’t come here for compliments, did you?

It began with the proverbial entrance of March. ROAR!

Not all fantasies are sexual.

Bum-baring Happy Ass Wednesday.

In sickness…

Gleeful quokka.

The anniversary of the greatest album Madonna has ever crafted.

Covered again.

Kinky & linky.

The greatest feud of them all.

The Hunks of the Day were represented by Will Helm, Amini Fonua, Dima Gornovskyi, Alan Valdez, Jordan Woods and Casey Conway.

Leave it to Ryan Murphy to bring the legendary rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford to the small screen with tonight’s premiere of ‘Feud’. I’m all for a camp-fest, and recreating the shooting of ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ is camp by definition. Even if it’s subtly sophisticated, Murphy can’t help but indulge in his trademark excesses. Susan Sarandon (Davis) and Jessica Lange (Crawford) bring their scene-gobbling prowess to their roles, yet I remain skeptical that this can be anything deeper than, say, the ‘Vogue’ video homage Murphy concocted for Glee’s Madonna’s episode. Perfectly rendered, perhaps, but lacking in depth or substance. If you have something to say, it better be better than, or at least equally profound as, the original. Not sure how one can out-camp ‘Baby Jane’ but if anyone can do it, it’s the team behind ‘Feud’. Either way, I’ll be watching, so they’ve already won.

My throat is still sore, so posts will again be a little light today. Follow my lead and take the day off too if you can – simmer some soup, put on some tea, and grab a book. I’m going to spend some time navigating a new phone, and possibly focusing on my Twitter and Instagram feeds. Think of this as a Cross-Promotional-Synergistic pollination project. There’s FaceBook too, though to be honest all social media is getting tiresome. I include this website in that too. Give me a couple of days to recuperate and find the muse again.

A bright brutally-cold day was greeted with a very sore throat and a lost voice.

This will be a quiet day, in every way.

I’m too pooped to write much, and I can barely speak.

Enjoy this brief respite.

I shall return, and I shall be millions.

Until then, have a cup of tea.

I like a dose of happy in the middle of the day. Usually I find it on a lunch-time walk, a welcome bit of solitude, preferably in decent temperatures. Here’s a story on a very friendly quokka from Australia. Still don’t know what a quokka is, other than a pile of cute.

Waking up with a throat on fire, and a new regime of physical therapy exercises to be executed every three hours, I found myself feeling all of my forty-one years, and then some. The exercises required warming my back first with a heating pad (hello 90) and the sore throat required some popsicles (hello 5). Somewhere in between them was the height of my middle age. We are here, for better or worse.

I’ve felt like an old soul since I was a little kid, yet the older I get, the younger I feel – mentally that is. Physically I feel the years, the decades. They show in my hair, my laugh lines, the furrow in my brow that doesn’t quite melt away the same way it once did. Aging doesn’t bother me, but the way the body begins its slow decline does. I’m coming around to the fact that no one is immune, and that I may need to modify what I eat and how I exercise, and take steps to improve both if I’m to have a full life. That’s a sobering thought, but one perfectly in line when you’re about halfway between 5 and 90.

This would be another dream of mine, though in the original version it was a church that I’d renovate and move into, with Gothic architecture, soaring ceilings, and a few rows of uncomfortable but impressive pews. Check out the amazing work that one person did on this former cement factory in Barcelona, and marvel at how beauty can come from ruin.

I love stories like this.