That Wonderful Sound

I got a new computer with some of the money from this year's summer work.  I really needed one.  My old netbook had become so sluggish and grumpy that I just hated to use it for anything.  I think when I upgraded it to Windows 10, it just wasn't quite up to the job somehow.

This new one has no such issues.  It is nice to feel that the machine is a tool and not an obstacle again.  Even though I'm not a programmer or a power user, as a teacher, I need reliable access to be able to get everything ready for my job.  The old netbook just could not provide that anymore.

My favorite part of it is the most absurd, I suppose.  It's not the big screen or the backlit keyboard; it's the fact that it FOUND MY PRINTER without my having to perform an arcane ritual under the light of the full moon and that it PRINTED A DOCUMENT FROM WORD without my having to turn it into a PDF, route it through Thailand, and offer up incense and prayers.  I simply opened Word, clicked the little "quick print" icon, and that wonderful sound, that soft click and whir, issued from across the room.

Technology working like it is supposed to work.  Who ever thought of such a thing?

Cold

I've been cold all day.  I got up at the ungodly hour of 3 am to prepare for a field trip to the state journalism conference, and I was chilled when I woke up.  A hot shower helped, but then as we waited for our transportation to arrive at the school, the cool spring morning crept back.  The vehicle itself was cold, and by the time I'd ridden three hours in it to get to the college where our conference was, the chill had become an abiding part of me.

Cold auditorium.  Cold lobby where I waited for my students to go from session to session.  Cold, meager outdoor lunch under cold grey skies.  Cold auditorium again.  Cold vehicle.

I have goosebumps that I can't seem to get rid of.  It's not just temperature anymore.  I feel totally drained from having to push myself to be social all day, to extrovert.  I haven't slept well the past two nights, so I know that's part of it, too.

I think I am going to go take a hot shower and put on some fuzzy jammies, but it doesn't feel like it will be enough. I need someone to curl up with me and take care of me for a minute.  I'm going to admit to being tired enough and shaky enough that just now, I want it more than anything I can think of.

Mammogram

Phoebe: (About waxing) This happens to be a pain no man will ever experience.

Chandler: I don't think you can make that statement until you've been kicked in an area God only meant to be treated nicely.

~ Friends, "The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break"
_______________________________________

I had my very first mammogram today, and I can't stop laughing.

I realize this is quite likely not a normal reaction to this process, so I will try to explain.

When I visited my OB/GYN for my annual checkup in January, he looked at my chart and said, "You're turning 40 this year?  It's time for your first mammogram."

My immediate sarcastic mental reaction was, "Well, yay!  More fun for me! Forty keeps getting better and better. Whoo-hoo!" Outwardly, I just smiled the little Noh smile I use when I'm trying to keep that inner voice from coming out of my mouth and into situations where it isn't appropriate.

Since it was my very first appointment, my doctor's office booked it for me.  As with everything from kindergartens to hair dressers, there is a "right" place or doctor that everyone wants to belong to, and so getting in is tricky.  I was sent a time, I filled out my sub paperwork accordingly, and I showed up this morning.

I was a little nervous as I think most people are when they're having anything new done at a hospital.  I had talked about the experience with my mother, so I had some idea about what was coming.  I couldn't get too stressed out about it, however, because of all the other far more invasive and painful procedures I've endured.  I was pretty sure there would be no needle, speculum, or heavy pain medication involved in what was ahead of me this time.

My radiologist was wonderful.  She explained everything to me in advance and made me feel as comfortable as any person in a paper gown open up the back can feel.

Next, I was bestickered.  To make sure certain reference points were clear for the doctor who would read the results, small adhesive markers were applied to me.  I kept thinking, "These things could at least be sparkly or have a Wonder Woman insignia on them or something."   I stepped up to the large ecru machine and the fun began.

Adjustments had to be made to the machine itself.  For those of you who don't know me IRL, I am absurdly tall.  Most of the time, I don't notice this at all.  I've never been short, so it's just normal life for me.  Sometimes, though, the reality of my height sneaks up on me in unexpected ways.  Today was one of them.  To be on the right level to scan the area in question, the machine had to be raised probably 18" from where it was previously.  The radiologist was petite.  This meant that once the machine was in the right position, she had to stand on her toes to get everything arranged properly.

Getting all the angles to make sure a full scan was completed involved having to tilt the scanner and reach around it in different ways.The process of having a mammogram struck me a little like getting a mugshot always seems to be in police shows, "Turn to your right.  Turn to your left.  Face the front." While I wasn't holding a placard with my name and id number in front of me, I had to do a bit of moving to make sure a comprehensive baseline of my breast tissue could be established.    As I was standing there with my cheek pressed against the machine, my arm wrapped around the side, eyes focused on its Fuji logo and breath held to prevent movement that might spoil the exposure, I couldn't help but think to myself, "I bet there is no test any man has to go through where they repeatedly have to hug a piece of medical equipment and then have delicate portions of their anatomy mashed flat."

The whole thing was much less painful than I had feared and fairly brief, too, as medical moments go.  I was putting my t-shirt back on and walking through the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital's imaging center much more quickly that I had expected.  I thanked my radiologist for an experience that was, if not exactly something I want to do on a daily basis, actually as comforting and well done as any such moment in life can be.  Then it was out into the sunshine of a blooming spring morning and back into my car to drive home.

As I hit the interstate, I started laughing.  It hurt.  Portions of my body that were, as Chandler says above, only intended by God to be treated nicely had been squeezed and compressed between two hard layers, after all.  I came back to the thought I'd had earlier about the differences in health care issues for men and women.  I wonder if there is anything men go through every year that even compares.  I don't know who'd I'd ask, but I'm curious. Through the "compressions," the held breaths, the gentle whirring of the machine in its processes, all I had been able to think of was that this is what it means to be a mature woman.  We find ourselves in moments of vulnerability, discomfort, and absurdity.

It's not a complaint exactly.  I am fairly sure that the twin processes women go through to ensure the various portions of their reproductive system are not trying to kill them, as unfun as these examinations are, actually create in us a kind of perspective.  Whether our feet are up in stirrups or we're hugging the mammogram scanner, maybe these moments center us and strip away trivialities.  They make us own these physical incarnations of ourselves whether we are comfortable with them or not, whether we've been taking good care of them or not, whether we find them a source for rejoicing, a source of dread, or a curious mixture in between.  We have to be totally honest about ourselves and with whatever healthcare provided is present, at least until we can put our clothing back on, pass through the heavy doors that always seem to separate the land of the waiting room from the land of the procedure, and re-enter whatever our lives outside that place may be.

I guess I could be sad about being older, about being of an age where routine screenings become required.  Instead, I found laughter in that radiology room, a sense of gratitude that issues from my past were settled now, a sense of comfort that I have medical professionals looking after me who will help me take care of any new ones that arise.

January Ends

I don't understand all of the mechanisms involved but it seems like I wind up in a bad place sometime between Christmas and the end of January every year.  I try to stave it off.  Sometimes, I am not even aware it's slipping up behind me until I'm already in the midst of trying to cope.  This year was particularly nasty, but I'm coming out of it now.

Week before last was manic, and Sunday night of that week, I had a nightmare which kept going when I woke up.  I think it was a panic attack.  I've never had one before, but my heart was pounding, I felt like I couldn't get enough air, my stomach hurt, and my head was starting the first flutters of what would turn into a full-fledged migraine later in the day.

That was when I decided I had to make some changes.  I moved some of the obligations that were making me panic.  I got some help with some of the others.

Those two small actions broke up the ice that had been building inside me.  I had reached a point of total paralysis.  Even small things weren't getting done.  I had a stack of papers on my desk that needed processing.  They weren't even big essays, just quizzes for the most part.  Suddenly, once some of the pressure was gone, I could get stuff done again other than just surviving.

Yesterday, I went to our country place and spent the day with the dogs.  Today, I slept for about twelve hours with purring cats, and even though I need to clean my house and get groceries, I feel better than I have in a long time.  January is over today, and I'm ready to face the new year at last.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow....

Today, I got up, grabbed an air tank, dodged a highway worker making a poor choice on a narrow bridge, filled the tank, dodged the same stupid guy on the way back over the bridge, and filled the leaky front wheel on my lawn mower.  Then I spent the next three hours riding in increasingly small circles in various sections of my yard until all the ugly upthrust seed Vs of the Bahia grass were gone.  My shoulders and back got too much sun, and I'm hoping they will decide to stay at "freckle" and not move up to "sunburn."

I had to do something, and mowing can be very meditative.  I turn up a random playlist on my phone and because my mower is pretty old, I have to put most of my attention on making sure it is actually cutting right.  It's not go-kart fun, but it will do in a pinch.

Finally, late this afternoon, Dad called to say everything has been cleared for tomorrow.  The surgery is officially on.

So now, I'm making lists, laying out clothes, packing up things I'll need during the interminable wait.  In a few hours, I'll go lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling.  Then tomorrow will be today, and we will see what we will see.

Retro-Eco

The really fabulous thing about living out here in the country in a house various members of my family have lived in for more than 50 years is that many of the tools of the past are still around ready for use.  Sometimes, they break down due to natural age, and I have to make the decision as to whether or not it is worth it to replace them.

One item I have never had a moment's qualm about keeping in repair is the old-fashioned clothes line my grandmother had situated in the back yard.  She had hers originally strung through huge old fence posts and cedar trunks more than head high.  Even cedar gives up eventually, and the second year I lived here, I had to figure out what to do about it.

The vocational center at school has a welding program, and my dad had them build me a new set of posts, huge steel Ts, to hold updated line.  We set them in quick-setting concrete, strung them with the plastic-sheathed steel cable, and it was ready to go.

Until Katrina dropped a tree on it.

Some time later, we dug up the pole, took it back to school, got the top bar rewelded on, and reset it in the ground.  Since that time, it's been standing sentry like Granny's version did for so many years.

I don't use it all the time, but when I wash all my bedding, quilts, comforter, sheets, all, I use it to sun dry all of that whenever possible.  Today, I got up, stripped down the bed, took the feather mattress out and draped it over a porch stair rail, and began the process of laundering all the fabrics.  Then I carried each load out to the line and hung it up.

Even though it's an old-fashioned thing, I like it for several reasons.  First of all, it keeps me from having to run my dryer and heat up my house unnecessarily.  Even though the laundry area is out of the way, there's no reason to make things harder on my poor old air unit than they have to be.  Second, it's nice to feel like I'm somehow saving electricity.  It never ceases to amuse me that so many of the things that people now embrace as "eco-friendly," my grandmother did on a daily basis because that was all there was.  I suppose there really is nothing new under the sun. Finally, I love how it feels to sink down in the bed at the end of a day of cleaning and smell that freshness that only comes from something dried outdoors.

The only real drawback comes in the form of a never-ending worry that it's going to rain.  It's always a sort of lottery.  Today, for example, I went to Wal-Mart earlier, and I carefully checked the weather forecast before I left.  Nothing but clear skies.  While I was wheeling up and down the aisles, my phone chirped at me, and when I looked, a severe thunderstorm warning had showed up.  At that point, there was nothing to do about it.  I just sighed and moved on to the pet food, hoping I could get my shopping done and get home before the bottom fell out of it.

Well, the skies are still sunny although now and then a threatening cloud passes by.  In a couple of hours, I'll go out and gather everything in, make up the bed, finish up the chore.  When I do, I will feel connected to my Granny.  I remember going out to the clothes line with her to gather in the towels or Grandaddy's overalls.  I remember the little bag she'd made that fit on the clothesline that held wooden clothespins.  It's a small thing, but they are the ones that matter.

Uh-oh.  Even as I typed that, I heard thunder.  Time to get the clothes off the line, I think.....

A Red Fiesta Pitcher

Today, I got something I've wanted for a long, long time.  Today, I got a scarlet Fiestaware pitcher.

After the UPS man delivered it and entertained my dogs in the process, I unpacked it and simply stood at the sink for a moment.  I felt its heft, inspected the places on the inside where the red glaze hadn't quite changed color totally in the firing process, not a flaw but part of the character of the piece.

I sort of fell a little in love.

It doesn't seem like much to someone else, I'm sure.  It's only so much clay, so much glaze.  It's not a limited run item.  It's not exotic or even very expensive.

There's something about it, though, that enchants me.  Maybe it's the art deco lines I love so much. Maybe it's the vibrant color.  Maybe it's the connection to family that I've written about before.  It's hard to nail it down.

The piece had some warehouse dust on it, so next I washed it. There is something about hand washing something that you love that takes the work out of that action.  It was pleasing to see the glaze shine through the soap suds, to watch the water sheet across the surface and leave it clean.

I finished up by making some pink lemonade.  It wasn't fancy or exotic.  I used no lavender and no mint.  It came from a Country Time mix.  Okay, I did supplement it somewhat by adding juice from half a lemon I had in the fridge, but that's the only extra I did.  I put it in the fridge and walked the dogs.

When I came back, I got a glass, opened the refrigerator door, and took a moment to admire the pitcher.  I swear it made the whole inside of my fridge happy.  When I poured the lemonade and put it back, I shut the door with a smile and wandered back into the living room just a little happier.

I am learning slowly but surely to let the little things brighten up my days.  Life is full of so many of these little things, trivialities, really, that are actually capable of being tiny drops of balm if we would only look around and allow them to do their jobs.  It might not always be a pottery pitcher.  It might be the bloom on my cucumbers, the fuzzy white chin of my cat as she sleeps with her head propped on my shin, the clean wood of the new stair tread my father replaced today on my south porch.  It might be a butterfly landing on a chestnut tree in tassel.  It might be the sound of snoring dogs gathered around my chair.  It might be the absence of the sound of a 5 am alarm.  Whatever it is, I mean to try to appreciate it wherever it can be found.  It's so easy only to see the nasty and the grim.  God knows there's enough of those kinds of things to swamp us, to blind us to anything else.  I think, though, that there are plenty of these good things, too, if we will take the time to look.

There's still more pink lemonade in that pitcher.  Think I'll go get another glass.

Prufrockianism and Other Poetic Clap-Trap

I haven't written in a long time because I haven't been able to bring myself to it.  I think about this space, and I think about the need to put words down to clear out my head, but for reasons I cannot look at clearly except out of the corners of my eyes, I always find other things to occupy my time.

And mostly, I've been happy.  There have been moments, but mostly, I've been trying to be happy and healthy and content.

It doesn't always work that way, though.

The nightmares are back lately.  Maybe it's the change of seasons or the phase of the moon.  I don't know.  I just wake up feeling old and tired, sick and sad.  It doesn't matter if I've slept for eight hours or three.

Tonight, I acutely feel my losses, all of them.  I feel the absence of people I lost or who threw me away.  I feel all the bumps and stones under my feet on this road less traveled, and I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have taken the other damn one.  I feel the impact of every sling and arrow.

I create horrible, maudlin pastiches of literature, too, apparently....

Leaving all the greats alone, then, I find myself slipping a finger across the glossy screen of my cellphone, and images of Istanbul and Brazil flicker past.  I stop on a view of the Ayasofia at sunset, and I keep feeling like if I could just get there, just hear the call to prayer floating again, I could be okay somehow.  That distance and that certain slant of light could somehow combine into something strong enough to hold all the pieces together.

Would that really soothe this saudade, this painful/beautiful longing in my heart?  I don't know. Maybe it's just an illusion.  The wise say that travel gets us nothing but what we took there with in the first place anyway, don't they?  And maybe tomorrow will be an optimist's dream, filled with peace, progress, and plenty.  Maybe the sun really will come out.  Maybe all the mermaids really will sing.

I keep having those Prufrockian moments, though, and I have to say that I am pretty sure they won't be singing to me.

And now, having danced clumsily through Shakespeare, Brazilian Portuguese, Eliot, Frost, and popular musical theater, I think it's time to face whatever face whatever comes to see me in my dreams tonight has picked out of its prop closet.

Good night.

The Tale

I've thought many times about coming back here and saying something, but to be honest, nothing I have been able to come up with has seemed to be sufficient.

I guess I need to go back and tell the tale.

I showed up at the hospital, and things moved very quickly at first.  I was shown to the little pre-surgery room, put on the dreaded paper gown, was moved to the holding area where my IV was put in and all the many people who were going to be involved in my surgery came in and talked with me, checked on me, and asked me my name and date of birth so many times that I really wish I had gone with my first instinct and put it on a dry erase board that I could have just held up.  There was a delay because my doctor was assisting with another surgery, and then it was my turn.  As with everything that relates to me or my family, once the procedure began, the situation got more complicated than my doctor anticipated.  There were more problems than they'd previously been able to detect due to the three other abdominal surgeries I've had in the past.  A general surgeon had to be called in to deal with part of it.  It took three hours to take me apart and then put me back together again.

Blessedly, I remember none of that.  The last thing I recall was the surgery team coming to collect me and asking if I was ready, to which I replied by telling the nurse anesthetist that I didn't want to know anything about any of it past that point, not the roll down the hall, not the color of the operating room (which I know for a fact was blue because they are ALWAYS BLUE and cold), nothing.  He grinned, injected something into my IV, and told me that would no problem at all.  The world spun hard to the right, my gurney moved, and the next thing I recall was a brusque nurse in recovery continually telling me that I had to breathe, BREATHE, to which I finally managed to mumble that it HURT to breathe and I wanted her to leave me alone.  I think she laughed.

I remember nothing of the rest of Monday.

The big events of Tuesday included a clean gown, staggering horrible trips to the bathroom, a couple of family visitors, and a migraine as big as the universe.  Apparently, the morphine in the pain pump triggered some kind of rebound headache.  And, since I had the morphine in my system, I couldn't have any of the medicines I would usually take for a migraine.  I decided to stop using the pain pump so they would unhook it and also so the backlash from it would hopefully stop.  I wanted to scream, but it would have hurt too much.  Early Wednesday morning, they finally came in with a solution, a combination of drugs that wouldn't react with the morphine.

They were from hell.  I'd never had one of the two, and the new one spiked my blood pressure and heart rate so high my room was a festival of flashing lights and shrieking monitors.  My body locked up and shuddered, my teeth chattered, and I couldn't breathe.  For a short time, it was so bad that I honestly thought I was going to die right there with my mother holding my hand.  Again, I was continually told to BREATHE, which seemed to be the motto of my whole experience, and when I didn't do it deeply enough to keep them happy with the O2 level in my blood, they put me back on that horrible little oxygen tube-nose thing.  I was told later that the first attack like that lasted about twenty minutes before that effect passed.  There were two or three episodes like that before everything calmed down and all the beeping and flashing quit. So Tuesday passed into Wednesday.

After that, things got better. I got to take a shower and put on real people clothing that didn't bare my backside.  I put on my bright blue TARDIS robe, leaned on Mom and the rails around the hospital ward walls, and staggered unsteadily up and down, up and down the brightly lit hallways.  I ate some solid food.  I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Egg Bowl from my bed after the doctor making the rounds decided I needed one more day in the hospital.  The following day, I carefully pressed the little red PillowPet dragon my mother had decided to call Surge (short for Surgery, apparently) over my aching belly, and the nurse rolled me downstairs and out into the cold, bright world.

Since then, I've been getting better daily.  I have been able to drive a little, and Sunday I went out to eat with my family.  Tonight, I went to a Christmas party for the choir, and I tottered down the hall to the organ in the sanctuary to play for a little while because I look forward to playing Christmas music all year long.  I am a little sore and a lot tired, but each new thing I manage to do is a victory.  Based on everything I've read, I'm moving through this slow process like I'm supposed to.

Things are different now, though.

There are the physical differences.  I've lost about twenty pounds, and weight continues to slip off me.  I don't hurt inside all the time.  Even though I don't have tons of energy, I still feel better than I did before the surgery.  I have had a couple of headaches, but they've been negligible.

Then there are the other differences.  It seems dramatic to say it, but the version of me who rolled into that operating room died there.  This version of me who rolled out is someone else.  I'd been living in silent and growing fear of this surgery for over ten years.  I hadn't realized how much it had accumulated or how heavy a burden it was until it lifted.  Certain dreams I have had, certain hopes for what my future holds are also gone now.  Other things are going to have to take the place of those dreams, and I'm not exactly sure what those will be.  On the other hand, certain restrictions my condition has caused for me are also gone now, and despite the uncertainty, I can't help but feel oddly liberated because of that.

So now I'm on the other side of this milestone I've been running from for so very, very long.  I'm tottering around and regaining my strength.  I'm re-evaluating, re-organizing, removing, even redecorating.  I'm making plans....slowly.  It's enough.  I have to believe that the worst is past, and now it's time to move on to whatever is next.

Countdown

7 days.

Mom came to school today and shadowed me.  She got to see how our school day works and all the moving pieces of my specific classes.  It's one of the last things I have to do before the big day.

I keep going back and forth between a sort of gnawing sadness and a need for relief.  I've been exhausted.  I've been hurting.  Yesterday, I had a hard time drawing a deep breath.  Physically, I need this to be over.  Emotionally....  Well.  You can't have everything, right?

On a different note, I just ordered a bright blue TARDIS bathrobe from ThinkGeek.  It's a "happy" from my parents.  I added a pair of matching house shoes myself, so I guess I will be shuffling down the halls in style.  I probably won't care, but at least I'll look geektastic.

Sigh.

7 days.

Up and Down

I have my surgery date.  Let's just say the week of Thanksgiving won't be much fun for me.

I am going up and down with this.  Mostly, I just stay as busy as possible.  That's easy to do with as much as there is to get done before the surgery.  There are school things.  House things.  Shopping things.  Pet things.  Every time I sit down and look at one of my "to do" lists, it seems I'm adding as much as I'm crossing out. I'm hoping that I'll hit a tipping point with it soon.

But what if I do?  Then I'll have time to...think....

Since the doctor ruled out cancer, some of the worst of my nightmares have abated, but I am still an emotional mess if I don't run myself ragged and fall down at the end of it.  Stupid commercials make me cry.  Facebook statuses make me cry.  Yesterday, a freaking doughnut made me cry.

If you don't know me, you might not understand the depths of my hatred for this lack of control.  I always keep it locked down.  Always.  Lately, I just can't.

I keep thinking about life post-surgery.  There's dread for the whole process of having to learn how to walk upright - AGAIN.  There's that nauseous anticipation of the day of with the needles and the waking up after in pain and sick from the anesthesia.  There's all that time out of class.

And then there are the things I can't write about, can't talk about, don't even want to think about, all the things that...won't be.

(turning away from that path right now)

Tonight, though, it's still ahead of me.  I had some awesomely spicy turkey chili, and my Dad brought me a doughnut (which did not make me cry this time).  My dear old cat Yoda is curled up behind me in her little purple sweater, and I'm curled up under the afghan my grandmother made so long ago.  I'm almost warm for the first time today since I woke up, and in just a short time, I'll go let unconsciousness sweep over me.

Tomorrow, I will get up running, fortify myself with coffee, shield myself with busyness, and do what has to be done.

What else is there?

Waiting

I took my Xanax and rolled up into the scary machine Thursday.  It wasn't as bad as last time.  Since they were doing the MRI on my abdomen, they used the "short bore" machine, and as tall as I am, my head was mostly out the other end of the machine.  I could see light, anyway, and between that and the super-pill, I was okay even when they put the IV in for the dye contrast.

Now I'm waiting.  If I don't hear from them tomorrow, I'll call.  I need to know a date.  The C word, we just won't mention.

Anyway, while I'm waiting, I have all this ridiculous energy, and I've been cleaning like a fiend.  This weekend alone, I washed all my slipcovers, bought new sheets, washed them and put them on, folded about three weeks' worth of laundry and put it away, bought new towels and reorganized my bathroom cabinets, took down my Halloween decorations and put up the few things I use for Thanksgiving, bought major groceries, and vacuumed up about three large white dogs from my carpets.  At least things are getting done.

Today, I was out for an appointment with another doctor, a theme I could live without, and tomorrow I'll be back in my classroom.  I am sure enough work waits for me there to keep me occupied with no effort at all.

Gifts from Furry Children

Yesterday, I had a migraine of the "hammer of God" variety that is always such fun.  I don't really know what caused it, but I suspect it has something to do with the upcoming "supermoon" we're expecting tonight.  My headaches seem tied to the phases of the moon as well as the phases of my body and the vagaries of the weather.  Since there was no supermegastorm destroying the world yesterday, I am guessing it was lunar pull.  Me and the ocean, I guess. The headache hit me hard and early, I took a Maxalt, and the rest of the day melted away into a hazy blur.

My cats and dogs hovered around me all day.  I suppose it was their way of checking on me.  I'm pretty sure they know when I'm sick.  Chewie spent most of his day sprawled out next to the couch.  Dillon, my little cat, stayed on me or beside me all day and on into the night.  It was nice to feel loved.

Other contributions from members of my furry family were less appreciated.  I got up this morning and stumbled for the shower without turning the light on.  The day after a migraine that bad my eyes tend to be fairly light sensitive.  I got clean and returned to my bedroom to dress, and when I finally turned the light on, the last of the critters' kindnesses was neatly laid across the foot of my bed:  a dead mouse.

It was bloodless and quite still.  This undoubtedly means that in the night while I was sleeping, either Dillon or Pearl brought me a mouse.  I know it wasn't Yoda; her Imperial Majesty doesn't lower herself to pursue food unless it's the canned kind.  Probably it was my big grey fluffy lioncat, Pearl.  She is the household huntress.  I keep thinking about her thought processes.  I imagine it went something like this.  "Mama has been sick all day.  There has been an absence of patting and love for me, even though I am furry and gorgeous.  Food will make her better.  I will bring her food.  I will provide.  She will be happy again, and patting and love will fall from the skies."  And voila, mouse.

This isn't the first time this has happened.  Despite all the efforts of me and my pest control guy, the occasional little brown field mouse finds its way in the house.  I saw Pearl stalking one last night in the laundry area.  I can always tell when she's scented something. She stares into odd nooks and crannies. She has a specific noise she makes when the is on the hunt, and her level of complete dedication to it is a little frightening.  There has been at least one other time when I woke up to find a mouse-present at the foot of my bed.

My grandmother's Siamese, Sammy, used to do that all the time.  He was twenty-something pounds of muscle, and when he was young, he'd go hunting in the field behind their house and bring her big field rats.  He'd lay them neatly on the back door mat, and since Nana hated all forms of mice, every time she'd look out the back door and see it, she'd scream.  I suppose Sammy thought she was screaming in joy.  He probably thought, "Yes.  I have made my human loudly happy.  Success."

As for my mouse gift, I removed and disposed of it.  The comforter is even now in the washer.  While I would really like not to wake up to another gift of this kind, I will take it in the feline spirit in which it was given.  It's nice to have something love you enough that it wishes to care for you, I suppose, even if it does come in the form of a dead rodent.

Summer

...and the incredible need to get out of here.  Summer.  The season where I'm rested enough to be restless.  Summer.  The time when I'm still enough to feel the lack of motion most acutely.

My parents are watching me out of the corners of their eyes again.  I don't know exactly what has brought on this new phase of my life.  They seem...I don't know...scared of what I'm going to do.  I am carrying on like I always do.  I don't perceive that I am acting any differently than usual, except of course for the fact that I'm not stressed out of my mind and I'm getting plenty of sleep.

I'm not sure what it is that they're scared I'm going to do.  Quit my job?  Purchase a big-engined fast-moving car and take off?  Shack up with somebody?  Get a giant dragon tattoo that covers my entire back? Leave and never come back?

Ah.  That last one. Maybe it's that last one.

I have a streak of pure Gypsy in my feet, that need to travel, get out, see "other where," see "other who"; they're absolutely happy if they don't even have to go in to town to Wal-Mart regularly. Maybe this is where the problem lies.

I don't know.  I just feel nervous, like I've somehow broken some kind of code I was unaware even existed, and now I must be, as Emily Dickinson said, "handled with a chain."  I hate that feeling of walking on eggshells, especially when I don't know how they got underfoot to start with.

Walking

The walls started to close in on me this afternoon.  I've been working on my book for the Ottoman Cultures seminar for the past two days, and even though it's been fascinating, I needed to get out.  I finished the text, got out my sneakers, and headed outside.

In addition to the need to get out of the chair and do something, I needed to clear my head.  Right now, it's going around and around in useless circles over an issue about which I can do nothing.  It's one of those things that I'm just going to have to accept, but it's hard for me to do that right now.  I'm assuming time will do what it always does, give me perspective and some relief (although this might be one of those Edna St. Vincent Millay "Time Does Not Bring Relief" moments...).

I haven't gone out walking in a long time.  In the afternoons when I've come home from school, I have felt too tired to care.  Today, though, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I didn't walk far, maybe a mile or so, but it is amazing how much peace can be found in movement.  As I walked, I focused on the simple act of putting feet down and picking them up.  I noticed the traffic, the various plants blooming, the red-tailed hawk that glided lazily from its hunting perch on the powerline in the pasture to the edge of the woods and disappeared.  I was able to put away the unsolvable thing as long as I was moving.

Now I'm back, and after a long hot shower, I am watching TV.  Maybe if I do this often enough, I can subjugate everything else and keep that red-tailed hawk calm instead.

A Million Little Things

It's amazing to me how much stuff slips through the cracks during the school year.  Today, I vacuumed, steam cleaned, washed all my bedding down to the mattress and sunned the feather mattress, threw out enough junk and old mail to half fill a giant trash bag (this may be the week the trash men lynch me), rearranged my living room, put slip covers back on my couches, swapped out a small bookcase for a much larger one, and renewed two magazine subscriptions that had lapsed.

The sad part is that I'm only about halfway done with all the things I need to take care of urgently.  Before I can get to the things that can wait but need to be done (like my closet.  oh my god.  my closet....), I have to get the house to a place where I wouldn't be ashamed if somebody came into it.  I probably have one more day of heavy cleaning before it will come to that point.  Then I'll just be sorting through the piles I try so HARD not to make during the school year but that always seem to accumulate on the flat surfaces anyway.

At some point, I have to stop and do a lot of reading for Turkey.  Hey, you know what?  This is feeling a LOT like the school year, after all.  (sigh)  Well, I have a pile of clean sheets I need to get out of the dryer so I can reassemble my bed.

The Weekend in Review

It's almost time to end this weekend, but I'm clinging tenaciously to the last few minutes before I'll be forced to let it go.  These days slip away so quickly.  I swear time moves differently on Saturday and Sunday.

I've been outside a good deal the past two days, not really doing anything but enjoying the rare bright cool weather we've been having.  The temperature was delicious.  Lying in my hammock or sitting in my chair and staring up into the shifting light of the tulip poplar canopy seemed to be the right way to spend time.  I have done a lot of reading lately; I'm on a Harry Potter kick and reread three of them this weekend.

Today, I was the sole form of music for the morning service since everybody else was gone here or there, and after that, I didn't feel like doing anything else complicated.  So I didn't.  I did a little light laundry, a lot of reading.  I refilled bird feeders, petted dogs.  I studiously ignored the wreck and ruin around me.  After the hell that was last week and the dread of the one to come, I needed time with no one making demands on me, no job to be done, nobody to support, just me.  Sooner or later, it will all catch up to me, and I'll have to spend a lot of time putting everything to rights, but today, I just couldn't face it.

So maybe it's no real wonder I'm resisting the inevitable.  I wish there were a job somewhere that involved reading and sitting in the sun for fantastic amounts of money.  If dogs could be thrown in, then I think I'd take it.  As it stands, though, I've finally overcome inertia and forced myself to take care of the last bit of procrastinated work that had to be done tonight, and I guess it's time to brush my teeth and turn out the lights....

Bee Herding for Fun and Profit

Today was another day with no air conditioning in my classroom.  It was more than 80 degrees by the time we were in the middle of first block.  Yesterday, similar conditions triggered a migraine, one bad enough to warrant Maxalt and 12 hours of unconsciousness.  To combat the ridiculous heat, I opened most of the windows around the perimeter of my room.  While this did help the temperature to drop somewhat, it brought in its own batch of problems.

First there was the noise.  Schools are active places.  Classes move hither, thither, and yon.  Even though I am on the second floor, there were still periods of activity where somebody was taking a class to the library or when some random kid was yelling to a friend across the green.

Then there were the bugs.  Yesterday when I had the windows open, it was wasps.  One stayed overnight in the curtains, and I started my teaching day trying to kill it.  It was remarkably resilient.  I hit it about six times before I finally crushed it in the window sill.  Wasps are not my friends.

Today it was bumblebees.  No.  I do not know why.  I guess that's all Central Casting had to send after I violently eliminated the wasp.  Two flew in during second block.  One landed on the back of a miniblind.  I thumped my side hard enough to eject it out the open window behind it.  Its companion made its clumsy way between the open window and the unmoving panel, thoroughly trapping itself.

This is how I became a beeherd.  I tried to gently shoo it toward the opening.  No deal.  Apparently, bumblebees are not to be "shooed."  I finally gave up and waited on it to decide to find the opening itself.  Yeah.  It seems the bumblebees quite stubbornly insist that the one place they currently are is the only door to freedom.  Finally, I gently slid the window closed, took a bright red folder, and carefully, carefully slid it under the bee.  It clung, politely folding its wings down as if it liked being on the red folder for some reason, and I moved it to the window sill.  The folder was too large to sit there, so I gently laid it on the desk nearby.  The bee, irritated that I was moving away from the light coming in the window, buzzed back up to the glass.  I quickly flung open the window, herded the bee back onto the red folder, and propelled it outside again to all our very great relief.

I think I can file this as #356 of the things nobody ever told me school teachers were required to know how to do.....

House and Garden

I slept late for me (8:00), and then I just sort of stayed in my pajamas for awhile, something I rarely do.  I watched Real Genius, one of my favorite oddball 80s movies, and then I read.

I had decided when I woke up, though, that today was going to be useful.  There was something at Moundville I sort of wanted to see, but I knew if I went that I would spend money I don't really have right now.  Therefore, instead of road trip Saturday, this was going to be do something about my crappy house Saturday.

I started with the yard.  There is never a non-mowing season in Mississippi.  Well, maybe about a week in December and the first two weeks of January.  Aside from this the growing things are a problem all the time. My yard isn't green yet, but it was scruffy with spring weeds, seedpods from blooming things, and drifts of live oak leaves.  The tufty stuff had gotten high enough to hide snakes, which like the yard are always a problem here, so it had to go.  I walk dogs out near the woods in total darkness, so clear ground is a necessity.

I got my mower running after getting air in the tires, etc., and spent the next three hours zipping around and avoiding boggy spots on the zero-turn.  It's amazing how much junk there was now that I've seen everything cleaned up.

Chewie, Yelldo, and even Roux were outside with me.   Roux was on her new run that Dad crafted with some industrial-weight cable and huge eye-bolts.  It lets her run around some outside between two large trees in the backyard but removes the risk that she'll take off.  She can finally have some sun with everybody else without having to be held on a leash.

After I finished with the yards, I got out my hammock and strung it up.  Roux immediately came and laid under it, poked her head through it, demanded I pet her over it.  I took a picture of her when she figured out she could stick her muzzle insistently through the loose weave of the hammock.  She's a mess.

While I was in the hammock, I saw the first hummingbird of the season.  He came up to the feeder in the backyard, stuck a beak in, backed up, and flew off twittering in irritation.  I guess tomorrow I need to clean up the feeders and refill them before the little sugar-hungry devils start roughing up  me on my way to the car.

About 6:30, I came in and got ready for Doctor Who.  The new episodes are on now, and although I know Moffatt is building character background, I still feel a little underwhelmed by this season.  Maybe next episode is "the magic episode" I'll need to kickstart my enthusiasm.

After Doctor Who, I turned off the TV and turned my attention to the rest of the house.  I cranked up the stereo and started in.  I cleaned up the kitchen and reloaded the dishwasher.  I moved laundry from point a to point b and started that process over again.  I vacuumed, the task I hate the most in the whole housekeeping rigmarole. I made a fresh pitcher of tea.  As loads of laundry finished, I dumped them on my bed since what I've been washing for most of the day is bed linens and my comforter, etc.

Now I'm waiting for Chewie to decide he is ready to come in for the night and for the last load of bed-related stuff to finish.  When those two things happen, I can take a hot shower, make up my bed, and get some sleep.  I'm by no means finished with my house cleaning, but what I've done will help me not to feel so bad every time I come home and see my junky house and yard.  

Nightmares

I wasn't kidding when I said I would have nightmares tonight. This, however, is really going to be no different from any other night....

Lately, I've had increasingly horrible nightmares.  All the old themes are there, like some kind of hellish classic film festival in the recesses of my mind.  I lose people.  I lose places.  I lose myself.  All of it is dressed up in the majestic glory of a mind too prone to imagination and well-fed with science fiction and fantasy monsters.

I wish I could sleep one night and not wake up, heart pounding, reaching out for...whatever it is....  I don't know what it would take to do that. I am tired of staring into the green glare of my clock as I try to make my mind comprehend what time and place I'm in.

It doesn't seem to matter what I do just before bed, either.  I can read the happiest, fluffiest stuff in the world and still wind up in that bombed-out, demon-ridden landscape that apparently hides just behind my eyelids.

It's time to head back there for tonight.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a different story to tell.  It would make a nice change.