Three conversations going on at once, a jackhammer outside the window. I am nerve-tired. I need ear plugs.
6.13.2012
6.11.2012
going somewhere
I'm taking a drive up to NY this weekend to spend a few days at a lake house in the crotch of Keuka Lake with my oldest friends. I'm traveling alone, and am not even going to think of the possibility of a failure of my body or my car. Shut up, I won't hear it. I'll be fine. I'll sit a lot.
Later this month my mom, sister, and I, an aunt, and two of my most beloved cousins are going to Ohio to a cabin in the woods for a week. I don't even care that I'll probably have to spend a lot the week being passive. I do not care. It is still something I have been counting down to for months.
It has just been so long since I've GONE somewhere, at all. I still sometimes entertain the fantasy of an instant fix to the damage that has been done to my body/mind/cells. So it's pretty easy to imagine GOING SOMEWHERE as the catalyst. Perhaps I'll sit on a dock this weekend and look at the lake for an hour and when I stand up, I'll be cured. Or maybe sleeping in a cabin in a state park will be like a shot of vitamin B. Or a mitochondria transplant. I think I need one of those.
Later this month my mom, sister, and I, an aunt, and two of my most beloved cousins are going to Ohio to a cabin in the woods for a week. I don't even care that I'll probably have to spend a lot the week being passive. I do not care. It is still something I have been counting down to for months.
It has just been so long since I've GONE somewhere, at all. I still sometimes entertain the fantasy of an instant fix to the damage that has been done to my body/mind/cells. So it's pretty easy to imagine GOING SOMEWHERE as the catalyst. Perhaps I'll sit on a dock this weekend and look at the lake for an hour and when I stand up, I'll be cured. Or maybe sleeping in a cabin in a state park will be like a shot of vitamin B. Or a mitochondria transplant. I think I need one of those.
6.09.2012
I have no choice
I have to measure the success of the day in a pot of beans and folded laundry. The rest of me is aching with inactivity and artificial air. Right now I honestly cannot separate the way I feel from the way I've been acting like I feel. This couch is a sinkhole, and my husband will be out at a gig til late, late, late. I am not today the girl who could go along.
6.08.2012
luck
Earlier this week I decided to be lucky, so I won a $5 Starbucks card in a bingo game. Everything else should be that easy.
6.05.2012
view from the lawn
6.04.2012
one, two
A paragraph of woe-is-me:
This weekend two days in a row I spent hours doing things I love with people I love, and both times it took a concerted effort to look and act ok. I get so mad sometimes. I'm doing the right things! I think. I'm treating myself kindly! I think. And yet, I keep having bad days after good. I feel so, so strongly that someone needs to stick a bottle brush up in my head through my neck and just sweep it around in there. There must be cobwebs or fungus or pus or dead gerbils. When I'm in a rut (I'm in a rut), there is so much ick in my skull cavity. It makes me feel carsick and dazed and achy and grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. I am all but panicking about the inaugural summer community band concert this evening. I have promised I'll be there to play, after having missed months of rehearsals and events. I promised I'd be there, assuming (as I always do) that I'd be just fine by June. I am arguably finer than I was in the winter, but I am not fine. I am mad. This might be the second time in my life I regret the fact that I do not play a dime-a-dozen instrument. If only I was a flute player or a trumpeter. I could escape without guilt, then. I will go, though, and I will do my best to play for an hour and a half. I'll do it because I do love the music, and I owe so much to this group (like a husband, for example), and I'll do it because maybe it'll help? Maybe a weekly performance in a park will be like a virus exorcism?
A paragraph something else:
You know, sometimes people confide secrets to me without meaning to. I think it's been happening more often lately because I can't run away. Heh. I mean, someone will sit down next to me and, true, I don't have the energy to get up and leave, so I'll stay and talk, and I'm at a rather blunt stage in my life when I like to ask direct/slightly rude questions. It surprises people into telling the truth. Anyway, it's been interesting. I spent at least 25 years being subtle and keeping my opinions to myself, and I'm kind of over that. I have always known how to tell the truth, but I'm doing it in a much less hedgey way these days, and asking for the same in return. And now I owe the world the ability to keep a secret once it's been given to me. I'm working on it.
This weekend two days in a row I spent hours doing things I love with people I love, and both times it took a concerted effort to look and act ok. I get so mad sometimes. I'm doing the right things! I think. I'm treating myself kindly! I think. And yet, I keep having bad days after good. I feel so, so strongly that someone needs to stick a bottle brush up in my head through my neck and just sweep it around in there. There must be cobwebs or fungus or pus or dead gerbils. When I'm in a rut (I'm in a rut), there is so much ick in my skull cavity. It makes me feel carsick and dazed and achy and grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. I am all but panicking about the inaugural summer community band concert this evening. I have promised I'll be there to play, after having missed months of rehearsals and events. I promised I'd be there, assuming (as I always do) that I'd be just fine by June. I am arguably finer than I was in the winter, but I am not fine. I am mad. This might be the second time in my life I regret the fact that I do not play a dime-a-dozen instrument. If only I was a flute player or a trumpeter. I could escape without guilt, then. I will go, though, and I will do my best to play for an hour and a half. I'll do it because I do love the music, and I owe so much to this group (like a husband, for example), and I'll do it because maybe it'll help? Maybe a weekly performance in a park will be like a virus exorcism?
A paragraph something else:
You know, sometimes people confide secrets to me without meaning to. I think it's been happening more often lately because I can't run away. Heh. I mean, someone will sit down next to me and, true, I don't have the energy to get up and leave, so I'll stay and talk, and I'm at a rather blunt stage in my life when I like to ask direct/slightly rude questions. It surprises people into telling the truth. Anyway, it's been interesting. I spent at least 25 years being subtle and keeping my opinions to myself, and I'm kind of over that. I have always known how to tell the truth, but I'm doing it in a much less hedgey way these days, and asking for the same in return. And now I owe the world the ability to keep a secret once it's been given to me. I'm working on it.
6.02.2012
8:00 AM
I slept well last night. I'm glad. I was worried there would be repercussions of a day of cheese curls and chocolate chip cookies. I fell asleep with my hand on S's arm, making sure he was still there, because once I dreamed I lost him.
I'm thinking this morning about the year I spent living in a tiny tiny room. I used to sit on a pillow on the floor and drink hard cider and tell stories to strangers on the internet. Once I went three days without seeing another human being, and ate a whole bag of frozen pierogis. That was just after one tide turned and just before I became my own wavemaker. Everything seems to build to everything else, doesn't it? Perhaps that's why the idea of my self as stagnant is so repellent, despite the fact that this is what my bones tell me to aim for. I am the one who craves order and schedule and the same, and I have the spirit that gets these things... and then feels trapped. Maybe this is why I very much want to grow a garden someday. This is apropos of nothing. I am just trying to put all of these years, including the next three, into perspective.
Today is bathroom scrubbing day. Today is laundry day and rigging things up in the spare room and it's the day my sibs are coming over for dinner.
I need to match things. I think it's because there are newlyweds one floor below me. It's 8:00 AM and I hear them.
I'm thinking this morning about the year I spent living in a tiny tiny room. I used to sit on a pillow on the floor and drink hard cider and tell stories to strangers on the internet. Once I went three days without seeing another human being, and ate a whole bag of frozen pierogis. That was just after one tide turned and just before I became my own wavemaker. Everything seems to build to everything else, doesn't it? Perhaps that's why the idea of my self as stagnant is so repellent, despite the fact that this is what my bones tell me to aim for. I am the one who craves order and schedule and the same, and I have the spirit that gets these things... and then feels trapped. Maybe this is why I very much want to grow a garden someday. This is apropos of nothing. I am just trying to put all of these years, including the next three, into perspective.
Today is bathroom scrubbing day. Today is laundry day and rigging things up in the spare room and it's the day my sibs are coming over for dinner.
I need to match things. I think it's because there are newlyweds one floor below me. It's 8:00 AM and I hear them.
5.31.2012
I hate mopping
I am feeling quantifiably better today than I was yesterday and there are babies being born and ones that are just now brand new and I have yet to roll my eyes ONCE today. Yesterday was all eyeroll, all the time. I was on a roll. Heh. Heh.
The deconstruction of the old health center literally right out my office window is more than enough entertainment for a Thursday morning (and a Tuesday, and a Wednesday). I swivel my chair to the left, I have a view of rubble and big dinosaur machinery and yes, a lone toilet among the debris. I turn back to face my desk and there is a healthy dose of work waiting, and a new doctor who does this with me over email:
me: "...I’m assuming [the pressure in my head] has something to do with the fluid build-up. Either that or my brain is about to pop and spray out the sides of my head."
him: "Oh, yes, that pressure in the head does mean it is about to pop and spray brains out the sides. I should have mentioned that.... to be most thoughtful of others you should probably carry paper towels so you can clean up the mess after that happens. On the bright side, once that happens, everything else will seem much less of a problem in your life."
me: "I think I'll just preemptively wrap my head in towels like a turban. I hate mopping."
him: "And thus the wisdom of the cultures that just wear turbans all the time. Always prepared. And you are right, mopping up afterwards is so hateful."
THANK YOU for humoring me, all of you, and especially S. This has been one hell of a chunk of my life. It's NOT over, but I have a new champion, and a plan, and like I said, I do feel better today than I did yesterday. So it might finally be in the process of being over. If that turns out to be true, I'll go into more detail about what this was and how I finally kicked it. If it is not true, well then. Shut up.
The deconstruction of the old health center literally right out my office window is more than enough entertainment for a Thursday morning (and a Tuesday, and a Wednesday). I swivel my chair to the left, I have a view of rubble and big dinosaur machinery and yes, a lone toilet among the debris. I turn back to face my desk and there is a healthy dose of work waiting, and a new doctor who does this with me over email:
me: "...I’m assuming [the pressure in my head] has something to do with the fluid build-up. Either that or my brain is about to pop and spray out the sides of my head."
him: "Oh, yes, that pressure in the head does mean it is about to pop and spray brains out the sides. I should have mentioned that.... to be most thoughtful of others you should probably carry paper towels so you can clean up the mess after that happens. On the bright side, once that happens, everything else will seem much less of a problem in your life."
me: "I think I'll just preemptively wrap my head in towels like a turban. I hate mopping."
him: "And thus the wisdom of the cultures that just wear turbans all the time. Always prepared. And you are right, mopping up afterwards is so hateful."
THANK YOU for humoring me, all of you, and especially S. This has been one hell of a chunk of my life. It's NOT over, but I have a new champion, and a plan, and like I said, I do feel better today than I did yesterday. So it might finally be in the process of being over. If that turns out to be true, I'll go into more detail about what this was and how I finally kicked it. If it is not true, well then. Shut up.
5.25.2012
rocking forward through the big toe
Today, because it's the Friday before a three-day weekend, because the library is cool and quiet, because I am wearing jeans rolled up at the bottoms, and because I need to give myself whatever room I can, I am walking through the book stacks barefoot. I can live here.
a new tack
I'm up in the air about these...
Quackery or The Answer to all of my issues? Remains to be seen.
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