Don't Go Down That Path

Inspirational song: Crosstown Traffic (Jimi Hendrix)

While I knew it was inevitable that I would get some kind of sickness during the course of the blog, and during my time living alone, I never put much thought into what I would do if I got something more lengthy than a migraine or serious than the sniffles. I'm not sure what I would do if I ended up in the hospital, like I did exactly one year ago last weekend. So far I have had perfect attendance, not missing a single day's blog post. But all day today, I have had the exact same pain that I had a year ago, my lower left abdomen feeling like it was going to explode. This is the only pain that has made me question my resolve never to take anything stronger than a Tylenol ever again. By the time the ambulance came last year, I had pegged out the pain scale, hitting ten after ten after ten, for almost two full days, and I allowed it when they offered me morphine in the ER. I'm in a bit of denial that it could be the same problem revisiting me. I really don't want it to be, not only because of how much it sucks, but because this year, I am all by myself. I have dear friends who care about me, yes, but none of them are going to move in with me and let my dogs in and out, if I find myself laid out on the couch for another months-long episode of this.

I got a call from an old friend out of the blue the other day. He told me that he was about to go in for surgery with the exact same condition. We hadn't talked in months, and have been trying to cross paths for years and kept failing. I told him that he called the right person if he wanted sympathy and understanding ahead of his procedure. So far I have dodged the need for surgery, although waiting to be sure I was clear did drag out forever, while we tried the few antibiotics I am not allergic to, eventually finding the right combo. My old friend seems to have followed a different, more challenging route to where he finds himself now. He can barely eat, and has lost so much weight that he is now thinner than the beanpole he was when we met when he was about 19. He has been an excellent friend for a very long time. I hope he knows well how much my man and I love him and wish him a very successful surgery and speedy recovery. I've been trying to convince myself all day that the return of my symptoms are just sympathy pains, commiserating with our old friend. We shall see.

The good weather arrived again today, and with it, my roofing crew got to work bright and early. The entire old roof has been completely removed, and I assume at least one decking board was replaced, as there was a big sheet of OSB in my back yard this afternoon. I tried to stay out of everyone's hair while they worked. I did observe an awful lot of asphalt debris falling everywhere, into my trees and bushes. This winter is going to end up being hell on my poor Park. I am going to have a very busy spring, pruning everything back dramatically, both to reshape everything that was damaged, and to avoid the overgrown appearance everything had by the time the rains slowed last summer. I think I like this roofing crew more than the last set of subcontractors. They seem a lot more focused. I felt horrible when I had to interrupt their one lunch break to clear my driveway so I could go visit my brilliant physical therapist. I liked their giant bar magnet on wheels that they used to pick up nails before I drove over them. I wish I had run something like that over the deck twenty minutes earlier when I put a roofing nail an inch deep into my running shoes. Good thing the therapist insisted I wear the better shoes to his clinic. Kept me from a surprise ER visit and a tetanus shot. The conversation topic of the day at the clinic was the horrible, horrible traffic all over town. The big bridge downtown finally reopened, only to be closed again when hunks of ice the size of traffic cones fell and speared through cars trying to cross it. The effects of the bridge closures rippled through town, even choking up my artery home from therapy. I think I would have preferred to stay home, listening to my house suffer thousands of hammer blows than drive through frustrated, angry, detoured drivers.

Creatures Great and Small

Inspirational song: Me and You and a Dog Named Boo (Lobo)

I think I spent too much time focused inward this week, while I readjusted to being the solitary human in the house again. I gave myself a lot of quiet time, and refused to press myself to do a whole lot even as I stayed home. But I was oblivious to the messages I was getting while I was reveling in the silence. I noticed that the dogs had become exceptionally needy in the last few days. It didn't occur to me until tonight that they are having a little of the very same separation anxiety as I. The little red-headed dog keeps standing next to me, burying his face against the couch cushion under me, and being very still while I pet him. His body language is screaming grief and loss, and I didn't pick up on it until now. He was so happy to have his daddy home, and now he is gone again. Poor dog doesn't know what to think. The professional eater has been pacing the house and yard with the large tied rawhide in her mouth like a pacifier, watching me with curiosity. I assumed over the last few days that they were having a little cabin fever because of the weather, but I get it now.

The cats are clingy, but I don't know that it is more than usual. The calico can't bear to be more than four feet from me, but I think that's because she is still fighting the virus that tried and failed to take down the old man last fall. The kitten spent a lot of time hiding while the man was home, and now that he's gone, she is all kinds of cuddly. She really didn't know what to make of him. She let him pick her up by the end of the second week, but she punished me for letting him stay. Is this going to be a child-rejecting-her-stepfather kind of situation when he comes home forever? I'm not going to let her call the shots in that relationship.

The kids and I all stayed in each other's pockets during yet another cold day. We should be out of the newsworthy deep freeze by tomorrow, and I will be back in my flip flops, and the crew should be on my roof by mid-morning. At least that's how I hope tomorrow will go.

Rolling Up the Sidewalks

Inspirational song: More Bad Weather on the Way (Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers)

I admit to a little nihilistic excitement about the ice storm, as it was getting spun up. I do that frequently with storms. Even knowing it could be my house, my Park affected, I do cheer for the weather as the big stuff rolls in. I always get a thrill when they upgrade the hurricanes or increase the depth of predicted snow. I like to brag when we get record setting wind (even though you will never catch me out in it voluntarily). For all I was concerned about losing my trees, I really wanted to see a ton of ice. I went to bed wondering what would happen by dawn. The dogs woke me a little past first light, around 8. We went down and all ran outside, they to pee and I to see the effects of the storm. I think we were all disappointed by the conditions. They didn't dig the crunchy ground, and I was sad that there was no snow on top of the very thin sheet of ice. I left them to do their thing, and went for pictures out front, and was rewarded with the first two or three giant, fluffy flakes to fall. I stayed out in the soft wet snowfall for a while, until my thin t-shirt and sweatpants ceased being enough to keep me warm. I watched it snow for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then it was over. The tail end of the storm was gone. The air was barely cold enough to compensate for the warmth of the ground. I walked around the entire grounds, listening to the trees crackle and sing, taking dozens of pictures.

I let all the cats have a couple chances to freeze their paws, but oddly, no one seemed to want to go very far into the wilds. The calico didn't last a full fifteen seconds before she scurried back inside, and the two black and white units filed in behind her in short order. Athena had to be lobbed over the threshold, and I had to be fast to catch her in a photograph before she ran back. But of course the old man was as bold and intrepid as a senile old cat can be. He had to be retrieved twice.

The entire town was shut down for two days for this storm. My friends in Colorado got a good chuckle over it, but I am glad they closed everything, including the giant bridges, in all the ice. For all I love a good storm, I hate hearing stories of traffic fatalities. By the time I walked across the street to share a little wine and all the news with my neighbors, the road was completely dry. I hope this means that by tomorrow, my roofing project will be green lit. And I also hope that my reports from the Georgia wing of my family improve. My stepmother apparently couldn't make it all the way home in her car, and had to walk the last portion of her commute. I can't imagine that was an easy hike, in her neighborhood with big rolling hills and no sidewalks.

Icing

Inspirational song: Supersoaker (Kings of Leon)

The ice is coming down now. I have been opening the back door and checking for it, in vain, for about 12 hours. I thought that the wet surfaces were starting to freeze while there was still daylight, but I wasn't inspired enough to go touch the grill cover or top of the patio table. I was proud of myself for making it outside to retrieve another eight hunks of wood, and then I was done with walking in the cool drizzle. The dogs are suggesting they need another walk in the Park, but I suspect once the professional eater makes it to the edge of the deck, she's going to change her mind about that.

I have been hunkered down, waiting for the storm all day. I probably should have run a couple errands before the roads started to freeze, but I just didn't want to be around local drivers who have never experienced cold weather driving before. Cities down here don't own a whole lot of snowplows, because they don't need them. Most of the drivers have never had to practice driving on snow and ice. I'm years removed from daily driving on snowpack, and I don't trust myself to be the best defensive driver against the crazies. So all my optional errands had to wait.

I'm on hold while I wait to see how much ice we get tonight. I have a lot of trees to care for, and this could end up being a very busy week, if I have to spend it cleaning up downed branches. For now, I'm going to listen to the talking heads on television picking apart tonight's speech, keep my fire going as a hedge against a power outage, and try to decide whether to make another hot cocoa from scratch. The first one was excellent. At the end of a pre-snow day, it was icing on the cake.

Perfection

Inspirational song: Stand (R.E.M.)

Normally I'm pretty forgiving. I understand that housing construction is not typically undertaken by meticulous mathematicians and artists. But is it too much to ask that the subcontractors and laborers who do the actual work try not to do more damage to your property than the repairs they were hired to do? I tried so hard not to release my beserker self when they were jamming their ladder into my dormant hydrangeas, breaking all the stems and warping the way the root balls sit in the ground. I assumed that when I pointed out the nails that missed the mark directly over my front door and the man said he would fix them, he would do it. I wanted to believe them when they promised three times that someone with a trailer would come back and pick up the debris pile they left crowding my neighbor's mailbox, and I thought when they promised to caulk the gap in the gutters they re-installed badly, that action was imminent. I listened quietly when they talked about holes in the siding, as if they were pre-existing, not suspiciously shaped like the tops of ladders (as at least one appeared when I went around the house alone after my PT appointment). I don't expect perfection in much of my life, but I prefer things to be predominantly right. This was not the case this time.

I spent more time with my physical therapist this afternoon. We came to a better understanding after I explained that I view pain during exercise with a big dose of "shut up and keep going" attitude and he prefers more of an "if it hurts, stop doing it!" viewpoint. So when I told him how hard certain moves were to do, he said to modify and take breaks. I will alter my methods. Previously, this therapist impressed the hell out of me with his Bones-ian superbrain. Today, I actually noticed his Tolkien-esque elven perfection too. The dude works out. I was lying on a leg press machine that uses body weight on an adjustable incline. When my shin started to hurt unbearably, he grabbed the platform with me on it, and moved it down a rung without visible effort. This man knows his stuff and applies it in his real daily life. He has more credibility than a lot of doctors I have seen over the years. But I still left his clinic sore for hours. Can't have everything.

I proved my crazy cat lady bona fides today. I went to a friend's house for dinner, second time I'd ever been there (first time with just me), and all of her animals, even the skittish shy kitty, came out to cuddle with me. And I mean cuddle. Not just passing by just out of reach, as most animals do with strangers, but rolling around, begging for attention, right up next to me. The young pit bull, who was pretty energetic when I arrived, closed out the night curled up around me, sleeping hard on my lap. It was a perfect moment.

My mother had a lot of damage in the last ice storm to go through back home. My brother went out last weekend to haul off a lot of her downed limbs and to take down the remnants of the critically injured trees. She has transitioned from dealing with the loss of mature trees to thinking of the opportunities for new plantings. I may need to borrow some of her evolved coping skills when next I look at the broken central spire of the rhododendron I had been nursing back to health for two years. And I will really need to find inner peace in the next 48 hours, when the predicted winter storm Leon brings ice and snow to my Low Country sanctuary. I hope we come through it with only minor damage. But I know the condition my trees are in. It's going to be dangerous to be out in the park this week. Branches will be coming down.

A Little Off

Inspirational song: Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights) (Pat Travers)

I never thought I lacked empathy. But today, I am becoming aware that I might have had uncharitable, disparaging thoughts about people who might not have deserved my scorn. Like many of you, I watch a lot of home improvement television. When homeowners complain about living in construction zones, about the noise and mess when they are having major work done, I might have rolled my eyes and considered them weak or prissy. In fact, I might have done that more than I care admit. Perhaps I have been unfair. Today was the second day of having a work crew replacing the fascia boards all around the house before they come in tomorrow to re-roof. (Side note: what were they thinking all those years ago? MDF for exterior surfaces in a rainy climate? The only thing holding it together in places was the paint.) The crew arrived at 7:45 this morning, more than an hour after they wanted to start, after I told them that they couldn't make noise that early in my covenant-controlled neighborhood. I got up at 7, thinking they would arrive any minute, and pulled on dirty jeans and a sweatshirt, and tried to doze in a chair facing the front door while I waited. Once they finally got going, I realized that I had blown my best chance to feel comfortable in my own house. I didn't shower while they were here, because they were on ladders right next to my bathroom windows, and going in and out of the house early on. I didn't even feel comfortable using the restroom while they were all outside. I had no idea it would bother me so much. I kept hearing horrible noises on the roof, and waiting to hear a body hit the ground, with screaming to follow. Thankfully it never did. Tomorrow is going to be even worse, with them ripping off shingles and slamming nail guns into the decking over and over and over... From now on, when the tv homeowners whine about living in the mess and noise, I am going to sigh and nod in sympathy.

The man is back to his faraway job, trying to recover from hopping between time zones so often in two weeks. Unfortunately, he doesn't get a day off between arriving and working again to get used to the old day/night schedule. He never fully adjusted while he was here, so maybe it won't be too hard to get back into his routine. I feel bad that he has to go through it. I know I'm terrible at it. I expect to spend a lot of the next couple weeks sleeping, and I didn't have to fly a zillion miles to get off my stride. I will just be experimenting with insomnia and narcolepsy in solidarity.