Thursday, June 04, 2009

 

Time Passes Slowly, Except When It Doesn't

Yesterday Spousie and I went down to the pond that's around the corner from our house and took our binoculars to do a little turtle-watching. It's something that we would find it hard to fit in if I weren't sitting around waiting for my shattered radial tip to regrow, embrace the cobalt tack that's holding things together since my surgery. I can work about two and a half hours a day, and then I'm spent. I take a lot of naps, the better to let the old body shop open up for repairs when I'm Out.

There are lots of things can't do, both at home and at work while the mending takes place. I can type, but I can't write. Sewing is out; reading is in. I can transplant little seedlings in the greenhouse, and I can water, but I can't bend over, so no digging, weeding, putting plants into the ground. Spousie's list grows as mine shrinks. She picks up what I can't do, and ours is a yard that takes two people, lost in the garden love-slave business of spring. I can't drive, but where is there to go? Spousie shleps my to my appointments, to my short shifts at work. Otherwise I gaze out at the lilacs and forget-me-nots, as if I could see them growing, chloroplast by chloroplast.

Ain't no reason to go in a wagon to town,
Ain't no reason to go to the fair.
Ain't no reason to go up, ain't no reason to go down,
Ain't no reason to go anywhere.

What else? I can still Photoshop, though my drug-addled brain is less than inventive. I surf the net, noting all the usual stupidity. Angelina has new tattoo! gushes the Huffington Post,
probably via People Magazine. What is the Meaning of Michelle Obama? a newsweekly wants to know. Rush wants Sonia Sotomayor (big surprise) to fail. Conservative pundits wonder whether our new court nominee "can really understand" what America Is About, as if understanding our Constitution was the sole province of conservative and stuffy white men.

I watch the fuss about Carrie Prejean come and go, note the latest in boob job fashion as the left tries to attach some phoniness to a beauty queen's natural assets, as if it were a challenge.
Some tabloid, or is it the Huffington Post again? dares me to match the celebrity with her reshaped titties. I image search and crop the empty eyes of Republican women and wonder if Meghan McCain has credibility with anybody as she tries to sell her peers on her family's Awesome Party. I learn that I can be annoyed from whatever distance, beneath whatever opioid cumulo-nimbus.

The object of the moment, as the doctors say, is to stay ahead of the pain, and I dutifully swallow the pills that keep the throb at a bearable distance. I think of all the pill abusers that used to pass
through Doc's practice, back when I managed it, trying to get him to write 'scrips for backs that didn't really ache, blood that had been dropped into urine in a fake kidney attack. I am grateful that my painkillers hold no mystique for me, that I finally have come to prefer my own tacky version of consciousness.

Time passes slowly out here in the daylight,
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right-- that old Dylan song wanders through the echo chamber of my head. In three weeks I'll be in physical therapy, stretching my way back to whatever rotations the new bolt will allow. In the meantime I'll keep company with some good writers, sleep through the podcasts that pour through the earbuds, twisting and turning my dreams into writhing combinations of old baggage and new players hefting it.

Today was difficult. Mostly, though, my life seems to be a series of lessons on gratitude, and through all the pain and annoyance of these days, I don't forget it, an occasional teary outburst aside.

Like the red rose of summer that blooms in the day,
Time passes slowly, and fades away.

Comments:
Turtle watching! What a great thing to have on your healing "to Do list".... yep being as productive as you can. Our bodies are pretty smart-- they talk to us & tell us when we are overdoing it & tell us louder when we don't listen!
Do you dabble in homeopathics & Bach remedies?
Might want to see about upping the calcium & Vit C so you are helping your body heal.

In a semi related topic....
remember I mentioned growing tomatoes upside down?
Here is this official product... but you can use any other similar container (saw a neighbor using large restaurant tins (rectangular).

https://www.topsyturvy.com/?cid=486255

Maybe you can grow tomatoes upsidedown & make it easier on everyone.... I like the idea-- here we battle slugs raiding garden space....

My other best advice is make up a not to do list. With you out of commission, somewhat, what things can be let go, put off or outright canceled due to the current situation. Or if some over the top project has to be done.... how about hiring a high school kid for some good old fashioned labor?

Whatever you can to to streamline & simplify will lighten things up & take off some stress.
You two deserve a break.... and not the kind you are dealing with!
 
poor lulu maude!
i'm so sorry that you're still in pain. i thought it would take a while to heal, but i had no idea it would hurt for so long.

turtle watching is good. so is bird watching and animal watching in general. after hurricane wilma, the drapes that covered the 2 sets of sliding glass doors in the back of my place got ruined (along with the doors). i was trying to decide what to get to replace them. while i was deciding, i started to watch the wildlife that kept showing up in the backyard and in the canal behind the house. it became such a peaceful and fun part of my day, and i decided that the doors would go commando. so many funny and interesting birds show up, as well as turtles and iguanas. i feed the critters so they'll show up again and because they are so entertaining to watch.

feel better soon, lulu maude.
 
P.S. Those eyes are creepy!
Possessed Laura Bush
& Winky Blinky Palin... what IS the in her eye... crosshairs of a rifle, or a crucifix???

In either case Ewww!
 
OK..I really didn't need to see Michell Bat-shit-crazy Bachmann so early on a Sunday morn chica! ;)

Hope you are mended very soon Lulu.
 
Beautifully done. Every bit of it.
 
Thanks for the turtles, just noted the other day that I hadn't plucked one out of the road yet this year. Wish somebody would shepard the skunks.
 
i came over here to tell you that i thought of you the other day. i was leaving for the store and wondered why a car was stopped on the road in front of my house. i looked and saw a turtle making it's leisurely way across the street. so funny! it reminded me of your post (i wasn't implying that you remind me of turtles). anyhoo, i just noticed that the last time i left a comment here, i must have forgotten to change my name to one you would recognize. i'm 'donna' above.
 
Superb writing, Lulu Maude - I particularly love the way you weave the Dylan song through it, but then again I'm rather fond of it (namely the piano-driven version by Judy Collins), so I suppose I'd be raving if you put it in your grocery list. Thanks for keeping the torch lit for me at EoN, btw. xoxo,

Sister Nancy Beth
 
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