Measuring a good day has changed over the years.
Actually, it probably hasn’t but I’m just making an effort to mark things down, take note of feelings that matter, that change the flow of angst and itchiness inside. Yesterday was a good day for many reasons – small and big ones. This is the highlight reel that ran through my head as I slipped into sleep: The sun was shining when I woke up, slowly climbing itself out behind the hillside and peaking between the budding leaves of the trees. The grass is so green and lush and the fact that it’s mostly weeds doesn’t matter when the sunrise hits it as Tigger the Dog does her business in the most inopportune place. My back was in agony but far less distress than the day before. I wasn’t walking like a constipated 80yr man so much as a stiff athlete after an attempt at a gold medal. And if I walked slow enough, it just looked like I had purpose - or at least that's what I'm telling myself people thought as I waddled grandly into the doctor's office. The doctor was entertaining. She thought my story jokes were funny and gave me an awesomely painful shot in the butt. The shot itself wasn’t painful. The slow spread of drugs from my butt cheek, down my leg and up my back was a wicked burning fire that soon mellowed into a warm glow and dumbed down the spasms. She also gave me a steroid pack that makes thoughts and me less fuzzy, and everything much more sharp and perky and bright. Such a change from the woolly haze I’ve been in for the past two months. A friend of a friend came by to look at the retaining wall project and was personable and knowledgeable and the project seemed like a possibility. He didn’t make fun of my garden attempts up till now. He was suitably gob smacked when I told him people use our driveway all the time to do a U-turn. He was impressed with my stupidity, marveling at the large rocks I’ve moved when I shouldn’t have. AND Larry the Owl watched us talk for fifteen minutes from a tree not ten feet from us, out in the open on a tiny branch letting us get close enough to take pictures with our camera phones of him scouring the ground for chipmunks before flying off. I had dinner with a bright and interesting and absolutely stunning girl who’s just as confused about this life thing as I am. Talking with her made me happy I’m not alone, troubled about her past journeys but delighted to be a she could see there are others out here just as confused and muddled about direction as she is but still putting foot in front of foot and moving forward. Or standing still for moments at time and just being okay with that choice. I am excited for a friendship that is just beginning to blossom and so honored that she reached out to me to share it with. All that was wonderful but then I got to go hear Husband play and marvel over how much he’s grown as a performer and writer and all around inspiring to me guy. Then he played the song he first played for me on our second date, which made me all gooey and warm inside – and I don’t think that was just a side-effect from the third dose of steroid pills I took. And I got to share moments in the bar with friends we’ve made over the past year here in Nashville, hear live music – some of it really, really good – and just be present in the moment. Last night, when I lay in bed, the heated mattress pad warming my weird broken body, sleep pulling me in, taking time to revisit the day, all the moments measured up to a good one. Here’s hoping today is just as good. Actually, I'm going to shoot for better than good. I'm going to shoot for a great day. These steroids sure make me feel that anything is possible!
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I should know better. When Husband says, “I think this is a Brown Recluse Spider next to Tigger the Dog’s bowl.” I should know not to look up a Brown Recluse on the Internet, click images and scroll down. I should know better because every time I’ve done that, I’ve seen something gross. And every time I see something gross, keep clicking on the link that takes me some place even grosser and more puss filled and then I can’t sleep. Or rather, I can sleep but there are massive spiders crawling all over me in my dreams and my hands are full of nasty wounds and then my fingers eventually fall off leaving me with puss filled holes. So, I should know better. But I don’t. Every single time someone says, “don’t look. It’s gross.” I look. I cannot not look! And every time, I get completely grossed out and have weird nightmare dreams that end up with me loosing body parts. Did you know there is a video of a dude squeezing a zit, the biggest zit I’ve ever seen? I do because someone told me about it and told me not to look. So, of course, I did look and I almost got sick it was so gross. So then, what did I do? I looked at other zits getting squeezed because – well, because there is obviously something totally wrong with me! And YES, I totally just Googled it again and watched it AGAIN! It was a Brown Recluse by the way. I know this because when I Googled images, I found THIS:
Well, it has happened. I have officially become an ‘old lady.’
Yesterday, full of grand plans, I got up and dressed and headed out to accomplish all the many things on my list of things needing doing around the house. My back, however, had other plans. While my project possibilities got my brain excited and raring to go, my back decided that massive pain and awkward movement were going to the order of the day. I actually had to grab a cart in each store to hold onto so when the spasms hit, I wasn’t folding over and moaning. My trip to Lowes turned into a slow turn through the garden section, picking up plants, telling myself the reality of getting them into the ground before they died in the pot were slim, and putting them down. I then had a lovely chat with a fellow in the woodworking section who kept telling my project was a Pintrest project. I’ve only really perused Pinterest Fail, I told him. Well, Pinterest has become the “bane of his life” and he can’t tell me how many “folks come in here with a stupid picture and think it’s easy to make. Have I done any woodworking? It’s not as easy as it looks. I’ve been a professional furniture restorer and I can recreate any antique and I’ve been doing it for years and years and this Pinterest thing is going to be the death of me.” I nodded and smiled and laughed and limped slowly away from him without a project in hand. Probably a good thing because later, at the grocery store, I started crying in front of the fresh faced assistant manager when my coupon-loading app wasn’t working and he actually had the nerve to be helpful and ask me what I should be getting a discount on. Yup. Actual tears came out of my face as I threw a mini temper tantrum, told him to never mind, that I didn't have time for this and waddled with my cart to the check out. And they kept coming as I slowly loaded up the conveyer belt with my no longer two for one discounts. And then got worse when the fresh faced assistant manager came up to me again, and offered me $4.00 of my total purchases, whispering in my ear so I wouldn’t be embarrassed. Too late dude. Too freaking late. When they signaled for someone to load my bags into my car, my face caught fire and my tears turned into a stream of total humiliation. I was officially too old to let walk to the parking lot alone and too much in pain to not cry. They were probably sure I would fall down and sue them and there would be pictures of the crying old lady in the parking lot on the evening news - oh wait this isn’t California. Anyway, a dude who was waaaaaayyy older than me walked me out to the car and put them into the tiny trunk of my Smart while trying to make small talk. I’m pretty sure you could have lit a match off my red cheeks. I couldn’t make eye contact. I mumbled my answers to his attempts at small talk. It was awesome. Sigh. Sadly, I really was in such pain I couldn’t have bluffed through it. So, instead of a day full of creative and useful house related productivity, I had a day of fuzzy conversations and weird writing that doesn't make any sense unless read though the haze of the most awesome back pills ever. I guess that’s better than making a Pintrest Fail project. Yes, I’ve called the doctor. No, I don’t have an appointment yet, but I will soon. Yes, I’m going to go out there and try this moving about the world thing again today. Here’s hoping I don’t breakdown on the floor with the toddlers. I’m pretty sure my temper tantrum will be much more volatile than any they can come up with and I don’t want to be responsible for teaching them to cuss. The weather has gone mental again.
Right now the tress are dancing about like youngsters at a rave. I’ve never been to a rave so only going on my imagination and lots of bad TV movies about why you shouldn’t do drugs but I think it’s an apt analogy. I am also fully aware I just used the word ‘youngsters’ and could change it but going to stick with it. I also feel it’s quite apt for what I’m seeing and feeling. Saturday and Sunday here were in the low 80’s here with a lovely breeze that made it feel almost tropical outside. The kind of weather you don’t mind being outside because every time it gets too hot, the wind cools you off. The kind of day that being in an un-insulated attic pulling electrical wires, like Husband was, makes for an instant headache and lost of poundage and a very grumpy Scotsman. The kind of weather the brings out weird beetle bugs that congregate on your front steps and try to make it inside over your sill and under the door that doesn’t quite reach the sill. The kind of bugs that make you check every pair of shoes that you put on because you’re sure their hiding inside, waiting bite a toe and give you some weird disease that renders you paralyzed but alive inside the shell of your body. A fate that, as Husband informed me before we married, will make him put me in a home because he – and I quote – “…will not be wiping my ass.” And yes, I married him knowing that. I think about that sometimes - the paralyzed part, not the Husband not wiping part. I do not think I would be as brave and as inspiring as those Boston bomb survivors that are telling their stories in every news outlet and magazine. I’d like to think I’d be stoic and suffer in silence as I mourned my past life. But really, I think I would be more like the Boy in the Bubble on Seinfeld. Of course I might end up like this one kid, Bob (not his real name), in high school. Bob had some pretty debilitating disease that may or may not have been Cerebral Palsy. I don’t think I ever knew what it was, I only knew he was confined to wheelchair. Bob had a MASSIVE crush on my friend, Susan (not her real name), but she didn’t return his infatuation. Honestly, Bob was kind of an ass, wheelchair or not. Susan didn’t want to hurt his feelings and, being a freshman in high school not at all versed in communication and honesty, she lied and told him she had a boyfriend. When Bob asked her who her boyfriend was, she turned and pointed to our friend, Sam (not his real name either), standing off in the distance. We thought that was the end of it but then Sam mentioned to us one day that Bob was following him around school and trying to run over his feet. Like actively chasing him, cornering him and running over his feet! Susan and I laughed when he told us, like laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. I can’t remember what happened to Bob or Susan after that but I still can remember the look on Sam’s face when he told us about running onto the grass to get away from Bob and his wheelchair and Bob following him onto the lawn, heading right for him and running over his feet! Perhaps, if I end up in a wheelchair, I’ll be like Bob, tenacious, mean and a little bit of an ass. I’m not sure how I ended up here, talking about Bob, in a post that started with the weather. But then I re-read the first line - The weather has gone mental again. I think I might have gone mental along with it. You know how you wake up fifteen minutes before your alarm and you say to yourself, "I don't need the alarm. I'm awake now." and you turn it off.
You're wrong. You really do need the alarm. Because an hour later, when you finally wake up again without the help of an alarm, you'll be late. And that leisurely morning of putzing about before getting ready for work - that putzing time when you write whatever is in your brain - is gone. And in its place is a hurried panic and an un-peaceful rushing about that will not help set up the day for joy. So, you will all have to imagine what I might have put down in this space today. Imagine it was brilliant. Imagine that it had you laughing, tears running down your face, belly hurting from the effort to keep breathing. Imagine that what I wrote was so magnificent, you passed it onto friends and just reading it made their day better. Imagine that this pretend post was enough to change the world. Are you imagining that? Good. Pretending something is perfect can sometimes be much better than the real thing. Hence people going back for a second date. Or getting married. Or having children. Or acting like their back or knees or brain are twenty-one and not slowly disintegrating and falling apart. Or buying into the popularity of Crocs and actually wearing them out in public and not pretending that their feet don’t smell up the room… I mean, really what are they thinking? Happy very slow to start but sure to be a perfect Friday to you all! |
AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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