That Moment When....

(haven't done a list in awhile....)

• You'd really like to get on a plane, fly a long distance, knock on a door, and punch somebody in the throat. Get over your flippin' self.  Really.
• You come home to find a half a tree hanging from the remains of your security light.
• You discover how really very actually dark it is out in the woods when a tree has killed your security light.
• You've put on the "polite and social" face so long that it actually hurts.
• You're so far behind that you are actually starting to catch up with yourself again.
• You have to reorder multiple items from a place because, for no reason that can be explained, the original package is deemed "undeliverable" by FedEx....even though it apparently never left their sort facility.....

Twitter Is Blocked in Turkey

....and the people have flipped a big old electronic bird to the oppressor by simply sliding around that block.  I want to stand up and cheer.  The images I see of people spray-painting the DNS numbers to skate around the government ban over Erdogan's own political posters fill me with the same satisfaction all those portraits of Ataturk flying on red backgrounds and plastered accusingly on the walls opposite the presidential residence did when we were last year.

Turkey is so dear to me after the Ottomans course and the travel that went with it.  The people who live in that wonderful place deserve better than their leader is giving them.  What a tremendously condescending insult to think that he has the right to shut them off from the electronic world.  What a tremendously arrogant stance to pretend he has that kind of power.  I keep thinking we're about to have a "V" moment there, and the results will be shown to us by the Instagram feeds, YouTube videos, and tweets of the people who will rebuild what he's tried to tear down and repress.

I want to applaud Twitter and Google, too, for standing up to a world leader who is trying to hide his own sins by denying his people freedom and access.  He's literally trying to cover not only his own eyes with dirty hands but also the eyes of the whole world like a petulant child who cannot get his way.  It heartens me to see them standing up, providing backdoors and work-arounds instead of folding their hands and waiting passively for someone else to do something.

I'm not much of a revolutionary.  I hate politics passionately.  It just makes me furious when I see such a vibrant nation under the heel of such a massive hubris-filled jackass.  So by all means, let's #occupytwitter since #twitterisblockedinturkey.

The Android Life

A little over a month ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my iPhone.  I had been debating whether or not I might want to change from iOS to Android for a long time, doing research and asking people who had the other platform for insights.  It was the day before my birthday when I finally found the time to walk into my local phone store, and as the tech-laden greeter came up to put my name on the waiting list for service, I still didn't know which phone I would walk out with.

One of the good things about the phone store always being so busy is that it gave me more than enough time to walk around and look at all the different models.  I started with the iPhones.  They were comfortable and familiar.  It looked great, and I knew immediately that it would be pleasant to use.

Then I strolled over to the Androids.

I've been using one of the Galaxy tablets from school to set up activities and hunt for apps my students might be able to use on the big class set, so for the first time, the Android devices felt familiar.  I started looking at the specs on memory and other aspects, and I realized that I could put in large memory card and have three times more space than the iPhone I'd been looking at, and the phone, the SD card, and the Otterbox all together would still be less expensive.

That sort of decided me.  Yes, my iPhones have always been tremendously good to me.  They've done hardcore duty all over the globe without batting even the tiniest eyelash.  Standing in that store, though, I couldn't justify spending more money for what was going to be less phone that I really needed. 

As I picked up the devices, the Android also felt good in my hand.  True, it was much larger than the iPhone resting in my jacket.  I had worries that it would be cumbersome to keep up with, too big to slip into a pants pocket.  The more I held it, though, the more I liked the way it filled my palm, the way the screen size increased because of it.

When my name was finally called and the sales associate finally came to ask me what I wanted, I knew I wanted one of the Samsung Galaxy models.  After a brief conversation with him, I settled on the GS4.  He took it over to the service desk, did that magic that they do, and thirty minutes later, I was headed out into the darkness of a February night with it clipped to my beltloops in a Defender holster.

It seems like a small thing, the addition of a new device to my life, but it has actually had a number of really rather profound changes on me.  The first came when I noticed the preloaded Samsung S-Health step counter widget.  I dragged it onto one of my screens out of curiosity, and slowly, I became more and more interested in watching the numbers go up.  I found myself taking extra trips down to the office and the mail room just to get a little more exercise.  This led to my buying a Fitbit Flex, and now I'm tracking movement and calories, and I've lost six pounds.  

I've also sort of rediscovered what a smartphone is all about.  I had gotten into a tremendous rut, it seems, with my apps and my habits.  I didn't get all the same apps I used to have when I was reloading this new phone, and some of the ones I kept work for me now in a totally different way.  Since Android is intimately welded to Google and since I am such a tremendous user of Google stuff, things I do all the time have become much easier.  

When I walked out of the store that night before my birthday, I admit I still had doubts.  It's hard to believe that now.  I know some people have horrible experiences with Android devices and flee back to iPhone as soon as they are able, but I have to say, I don't think that will be me.  This change has been totally for the better.

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.

Yeah. It's Still Me.

Consider it a part of the general redesign and fluffing of my life right now.  I just wanted something different.  It may look different again tomorrow.  I make you no promises.

Little Broken Hearts

Every once in awhile, I stumble across an album that I can't stop listening to.  I loop it instead of listening and putting it into a rotation.  Generally speaking, I like variety instead of repetition.  Little Broken Hearts by Norah Jones is currently sort of obsessing me.

Oh, it's not new.  It's been out awhile.  I've had it on my list of things to get.  I finally did the other night, and it's one of those things I'm kicking myself for not getting earlier.

This album is rare in that I think I like every single song on it.  Some cut me more personally than others.  Since it's an album of broken relationships as indicated by the title, not all of these places Jones goes are happy ones.  They're rendered lovely, though, by her voice and artistry.  Sometimes there is beauty even in the shadows of the dark places we go, I guess.

As usual, I also find myself drawn to the lovely little tune with the crazy little lyrics.  I was halfway through "Miriam" the first time before I realized what she was saying.  I restarted it, pulled up the lyrics online, and I immediately fell in love with it.  I think I'm going to make a playlist of nothing but all these happy little psycho songs I have accumulated over the years.  I will do this without looking too closely at what that probably says about me....

Most of all, though, I will continue to enjoy the voice of Norah Jones.  She has such an unusual and rich sound.  Come Away with Me has been something I have enjoyed forever.  Little Broken Hearts, however, adds some edge to both her lyrics and her sound.  It's different, but unlike some of the reviewers I read, I don't think that's bad.  Clearly, as time goes on, we aren't the same people anymore.  Our life experiences change us, or they should, anyway, if we're living any sort of life at all.  Why do we always seem to expect every album from a performer to sound the same as if they aren't changing, too?  That's absurd.  We should enjoy the evolution instead of demanding what only really amounts to stagnation.

A Twenties Sort of Day

In the last 24 hours, I've read two and a half books.  The first two were utterly forgettable fluff.  The third, though, has been fabulous.  It's Bill Bryson's One Summer:  America 1927.

I've read a lot of Bryson's books, and he has the ability to make any subject fascinating.  I have no idea how many hours of research it must take him, but he never fails to show all the layers and connections of his chosen subject.

He also never fails to infuse that subject with humor.  Sometimes, it's just subtle irony.  Sometimes, it's absolutely side-splitting stuff.  His A Walk in the Woods has several passages that make me laugh until I cry.

In this book, he's walking the reader through the Roaring Twenties, showing how all things and people are connected by looking at one singular summer.  While it's true that a lot happens in this brief time, he doesn't limit the scope to just those weeks.  He traces histories and causes of the things that arise, and he also in some cases goes on to show the long-lasting repercussions and legacies.  It's fascinating.

So many of the people and things he's covering have become so well-worn in even the most basic overview of the history of the 20s that I don't think we generally appreciate how much work went into them and how special they really were.  He covers baseball, Prohibition, Lindbergh, politics, finance, international relations, and I'm only about halfway through.  It's fabulous.

Lindbergh is one of the key figures.  Everybody knows he was the first non-stop flight over the Atlantic.  Bryson presents the reader with so many things that have gotten lost from the broader, timeline-dot sort of approach to history. I know I personally walked through the Air and Space Museum and saw The Spirit of St. Louis, sort of took a moment to notice it and moved on.  Had I read this first, I think I could have appreciated it vastly more.  To tell the truth, I spent so little time and knew so little that I didn't even notice that it was a canvas plane treated with a metallic varnish.  Bryson's account brought home how terrifying it must have been to try to cross an ocean in what was essentially "a flying tent."  I can start to give the accomplishment the recognition it deserves because now I have a feeling of these people as more than photographs and footnotes.  I appreciate that depth tremendously.

This is what history textbooks should be like.  They should be less concerned with bulleted lists and more concerned with telling the story of the amazingly interconnected web of events that shapes the world.  I know that I began to love history only when I had a professor who made those connections for me.  My History of England professor assigned us readings that were largely bone dry, but in class, he told us stories of the very real people who were involved in, creators of, or trapped by the wheel of time.

If you're interested in American history, the 1920s, aviation, baseball, literature, politics, or just basic human life, I highly recommend this book.  I think it has something for everyone.  For me to say that and not have finished yet is probably the biggest indicator of how good I think it is.

New Year's Eve and Cookies

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm celebrating with my usual flair.  I have lit the candles that will take me into the new year, and everything I could be in charge of as far as cleaning (which isn't much, actually) is done.  The house hasn't been scrubbed and polished to the nth-degree as I usually do on New Year's Eve, but I did sweep today (bad luck to do it tomorrow), and I washed all the pans and bowls I used during today's manic baking spree.  They're quietly drying in the new little stainless steel drainer in my sink.

Usually at this time of the year, I'm full of introspection, full of thoughts of the past and worries about the future, but not this year.  I'm watching Criminal Minds in my comfy pajamas, and there is an absolute minimum of navel gazing.

And that, of course, is because I made oatmeal raisin cookies today.

This seems like a total non-sequitur, I know, but bear with me.  I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.

I remember when I had my myomectomy while I was still in Indiana. There was a period after that when all things in my life sort of fell into focus.  I stopped caring about a bunch of things (and one notable person) who I'd allowed to cause me absolute woe.  I started doing things I had always wanted to do instead of smiling wistfully and saying, "Someday."  To use a phrase that is endlessly new-agey and trite, I found myself.  Rather, I found a new version of myself.  I really liked that person.  (Of course, one of the things that happened during that time was going to a meeting of the kendo club, and so the evil T came into my life and things sort of took a hard left for the worse....)

I feel that clarity of purpose again now.  I've been sick for...  God. I don't even know.  Between the migraines and the Topamax and this other, I've been sick for years and years.  I'd say that in just the past calendar year, I've had less than two weeks a month where I felt like doing anything other than surviving.  Now, though, even with the limitations currently on me with recovery, I am finding that other person I lost again.

There were so many things I'd lost along with that other me.  Many of them wouldn't mean a thing to anyone but me, but I guess that's what life is made of, the things we endow with importance for ourselves.  From the time I was in high school, I used to make a batch of sourdough bread every week.  I started it with the idea of giving a loaf (or so) to my grandparents.  That ritual got even more important to me when my Granny got sick.  She couldn't eat a lot of things, but she could eat my sourdough.  I had starter that I kept religiously fed for years.  It died when I went to Japan, clearly, but when I came back, I tried repeatedly to get my routine back again.  As my health declined, so did my resolution.  I just mixed up batch two of the bread today.  Every step of the process made me feel good.

It wasn't just the bread.  The cast iron skillets that are the legacy of both my grandmothers came to me shiny and well-conditioned.  Yesterday, I decided to make cornbread from my Granny's recipe for the first time in what I guess is probably three years, and when I took it out, even though I'd taken pains to store it properly, it was in need of care.

That was one of the moments (and I've had several lately) when how much I'd let go and how much of myself I'd lost really hit home.  My life before the surgery had become about the quickest possible solution, the easy path to finish the necessary before I fell down.  Now it doesn't have to be.  Oh, there's nothing particularly complicated about the foods I'm making.  My grandmother's cornbread is fabulous, but cornbread isn't a recipe requiring Cordon Bleu training.  The aforementioned oatmeal cookies I put together today weren't complex, either. The thing is, I CAN make them now. I don't have to run for the couch and collapse.  Pain and weakness aren't pinning me down. I have the energy and the will again to do something that I enjoy because it connects me to my past and allows me to share with my family.  Somehow, oddly, ironically, by losing something, I have managed to become more whole.

It's not just the cooking.  My house has been full of projects that I was "going to get around to" but never have.  I have been systematically fixing, changing, and moving.  I've been making things I pinned on Pinterest for someday happen now.  It's not perfect, but I'm making progress.  I have two great piles left to tackle, but as I look around my living room now, this house reflects me again.  (And maybe those two great piles are representative of me, too, heh....)  It feels like home.

So I'm back to the salad days.  Maybe it's the baking days for me.  Whichever.  I can't say that there aren't moments of difficulty and sadness, and I'm not such a sunshine-dazzled fool that I believe everything is always going to be fabulous, but right now, I have to say, things are pretty good.  That's a nice place to be as I get ready to leave 2013 and head into 2014.

And now, I'm going to have a cookie.  Happy New Year to you wherever you are.

A Hopeful Song

"I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" lyrics
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

----
I've heard this song and played this song a million times.  It is only this year that it finally sank in.  Isn't it funny how you can suddenly encounter something for what feels like the first time even after having it underfoot for a lifetime?

The third and fourth verses are the ones that moved me.  Despair is all around.  Darkness encroaches.  Every day our news is full of violence and hate, greed and self-interest.  The song doesn't end there, though.  Even the bells know the antidote, "God is not dead nor doth he sleep."  No matter how bad things get, there is cause for joy and hope in that. Someday, "the wrong shall fail, the right prevail" and we will have that peace and goodwill we so desperately need.

Merry Christmas to you one and all.

A Christmas Carol

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
― Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

I haven't felt very Christmassy this year.  Music is the best of Christmas for me, but this year, the songs make me cry.  Family gatherings are also usually a great joy.  This year, nothing but anxiety fills me.  It's okay.  I'm moving through something, and it is going to take time.

Even though there's all this stuff going on, though, some parts of Christmas shine through.  I'm watching the Patrick Stewart version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol.  I watch one version or another almost every year.  Of all the Christmas movies and feel-good stories out there, this one is the ultimate for me.  This version is one of my favorites because it is so well done.

I always feel so for Scrooge.  He is a person who built walls between himself and others because...because it seemed right at the time.  Because it seemed the way to get what he thought was the most important thing in life.  Because he was hurt and knew no other way to deal with the pain.  Somewhere along the way, those walls started to grow on their own, and by the time we meet Scrooge, he's blocked off from every human feeling.  A gentle nudge won't do.  Walls only come down with the brute force of a sledgehammer.  And when those walls do start to come down, he begins to understand what is and is not worth the price of life.  What does and does not enrich and redeem the time that is given.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is an example of this.  He hides the ragged and pitiful beings he calls the children of men, ignorance and want, beneath his rich gown.  Dickens is not subtle.  He wants us to remember that Christmas has to be about more than the frills and the bows, the gifts and the decorations. Advertising bombards us on every side telling us that if we buy the right piece of jewelry or get the latest gaming system then our lives will be somehow complete, that we just need a special thing to fill the hole in our hearts.  When we live like that, when all we strive for is the top layer of Christmas and shut out the lessons that it teaches, when we forget the love, the almighty love that ought to be the best and most glorious part of Christmas, then we wind up like Scrooge, headed for that horrible end and yawning, unmourned grave.

I love to watch him change.  I love to think that no matter how poor and blind we may be, there is always a chance that our eyes can open and we can be redeemed.   When someone turns away, there is always another option, another path.  There is such tremendous hope in A Christmas Carol.  It's such a tiny work, but it has lasted because of that hope, that ability to bring an ice-axe into our hearts and break up the frozen chunks the world creates. And if my eyes are filled with tears again as I watch it, they're not tears of despair.  They are tears of remembering and gratefulness.  They are my own version of Scrooge's Christmas miracle.

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.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day. I've cleaned as much as I would if company were coming. I still have a few things to do. I don't know if it will be enough to let me sleep. 

I'm so nervous. At least it's supposed to be early tomorrow so I don't have that gruesome wait in the hospital. 

I'm just going to watch a little more Doctor Who and try my best to sleep. Hard to believe how much my life is about to change.....

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?

Thoughts Right Before Sleep

If I'm honest, this could just be the bone-shattering fatigue or the total sugar crash or too much or not enough caffeine or the sad, scary day or a random flutter of a dozen other things. That qualifier in place, it must be said that I miss you. 

I don't know how this happened. 

Well.... That's probably a lie. 

I was actually waiting for it to happen, but I was hoping to be proven wrong just once. 

I'm too tired to do much navel-gazing. I'll strip it down to the bones. You're gone, and I wish you weren't. 

The End. 

Again. 

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.

Philosophising Early in the Morning

Ideas will come in the shower it seems.  Maybe it's all that stimulation of the scalp when one is washing the hair....

In any case, I was thinking about what's coming and about the last few weeks or so of my life.  There's been the obvious crap, but there have also been some unexpected revelations and refocusing.  Call it a readjustment of perspective, perhaps.

Since all this has begun, I've realized that some things are not as important as I was making them out to be.  The world will keep spinning whether these things are okay or not.  They're externals.  I won't go so far as to say they're trivial, but they aren't the heart of who I am or what I have to have to go on.  It's been a great relief to realize this, to be able to open my hand and let them go.

The same thing can be said of people.  Maybe this is one thing that times of hardship are supposed to do, make us re-evaluate the great tide of individuals with whom we tend to surround ourselves and really look, really look, at our relationships with them.  I think I am guilty of self-deception sometimes as to what that relationship really is.  Maybe we all are.

All I can say with certainty is this:  I am grateful beyond all I can express for my friends and family who have "stepped up" to help hold me up.  It might have been a phone call or an instant message.  It might have been a goofy story, a pin on Pinterest, or something geeky on FB that made me laugh.  It might have been one sentence, truly meant, telling me they're praying.  It might just have been distracting me from this gristmill of scariness grinding away in my head all the time.  Whatever it was, those people are helping me carry this thing, whether it turns out to be the worst-case scenario or just the lesser horror I already know is coming.

As for the rest...

Well...

Maybe it's time to clear the game board of them.  It's not that they're not wonderful in their own way, but life sometimes needs to be stripped back to the essentials.  I think somehow I cluttered mine up with things that were shiny on the outside but completely hollow within. Maybe they started out real and living, and it's time and the way we all change that has robbed the relationship of its connection.  Reality checks like this are hard to swallow; I can't deny it.  Better to wake up finally, though, and acknowledge something is broken and used up, to get rid of it for something meaningful before I put my hand out expecting support and fall right through the saw-dust illusion of it instead.

Random Bits

Today, BBC America had lots of Doctor Who with Ten in it on.  I sort of got sucked into that, and once again, I was astonished by just how good David Tennant was in that role.  Sure, there were moments that were WAAAAAY over-the-top.  The remote-controlled spinning Christmas trees of death come immediately to mind.  Even those were lots of fun, though.    The show swung back and forth between humor and absolute heartbreak.  I can't watch those last episodes, really starting with The Waters of Mars.  They are so terribly sad....  

I've spent the weekend holed up, reading mostly, watching tv, sleeping.  I finished a reread of Wicked, and I remember now why I never bothered to read the rest of those books.  I think it is one of the most depressing books I have ever read.  The Broadway show is such a perky, cheerful, and heart-lifting thing.  I cannot see how they ever drew it out of the original, to be honest.  I kept telling myself I was going to stop reading it, but I hate to abandon a book.  There's a certain feeling of accomplishment that comes from finishing something, especially something that becomes an endurance race.

I'm trying to get mentally ready for the week to come.  Friday was...a tough day.  I had to give more than I had in me.  There were several times when I just wanted to go down the hall to our little breakroom and lock the door behind me.  

Obviously, I didn't, but the thought was there.  I don't much like that.

So, I'll keep distracting myself with random bits.  Right now, it's Sherlock reruns.  Soon, it will be bedtime.  Then tomorrow will be on me full-force.  Maybe all the random bits will be enough to help me through it.

Shaky

I guess I'll take a minute to update the 1.5 individuals who read this on my life.  My surgery hasn't been scheduled yet.  To determine whether or not it will be done by my doctor or the GYN oncologist (there needs to be an acronym just for this, I think), I will have an MRI next Thursday.  After that, the final question should be answered.

And I need that.  I desperately need all the little slivers of hell to fall into an orderly procession.  Why it is better if I know when things are happening is a mystery.  Actually, it probably has to do with the illusion of control.  Being able to put it into my iPhone calendar makes me feel like I'm doing something as opposed to something happening to me, I guess.

Stupid, isn't it?

I'm not doing well with this.  I'm shaky.  I drive in to work, hear a song on the radio, and I'm in tears.  I hate that.  I hate not being able to maintain.  It feels like failure.  Every day that I'm able to get in my classroom and get teaching done, I feel like I've accomplished something major.

I suppose I should just be grateful that I the rest of this year has been what it has been... Venice.  Istanbul.  Good things and places that I can retreat to in my mind while my body goes through whatever winds up being next.  I don't know what else to do.  There's no running away anymore.

And Then There Were None

It's been a long day, and I'm not going to belabour this.  I'm not up to it.

I will have a hysterectomy, probably sometime around Thanksgiving.  They're still not sure about endometrial cancer; other tests will have to be done.

The other shoe, the one that's been hanging in the air since I first walked into the student health center at IU so long ago, has finally dropped.

And I just can't talk about it anymore.