One Week In




Rain!  Enough already!

  
Regular life rolls along and takes one with it, and for the most part, I've managed to maintain stable vital signs.   In Knockersville, my post-radiation rash continues to bloom as enthusiastically as a spring weed, but I believe it has now peaked out and hopefully will begin to recede.  I am becoming quite practiced at scratching old Lefty while maintaining my dignity, even though it makes my back leg want to shake uncontrollably and my right eye roll around in bliss.

I am back on duty at the Good Ship Orthopod, and work is going well.   To my great relief, the dreaded post-radiation exhaustion has not been a big issue for me during the day.   However, once home, I have found  that I have new skills that kick in whenever I settle into my chair and have a warm dog on my lap.  I am now proficient at catatonia, astral traveling and drooling, pretty much instantaneously and lasting for a generous hour.   I have not been capable of reaching this depth of alpha waving since pregnancy, and it's so sweetly sopophoric that it's a huge job to claw my way back to consciousness, mop up my chin and chest and then turn my attention to dinner.

I am targeting replenishing my resources this summer, and to that end I have begun a self-designed mental and physical program designed to refill the larders.   I think that the stress connected with an adventure such as this is quite insidious, and can leave one with kind of a negative balance.  This is a kind of bewildering state, an unfamiliar landscape of profound relief and trepidation, assimilating old and new philosophies, tolerating both indulgence and discipline.  Kind of like mincing ahead with tentative authority.  Sort of.

I have always felt that the basics in life - good sleep, food, exercise, laughter, the company of family and fine friends, are bankable entities and become the antithesis to a tsunami.  They fill the void and re-arm the defenses.  Really savoring all this good stuff adds flavor and substance to the soul, doesn't it?  

In the meantime, I have declared war against the dozen pounds that have appeared in the last three months, entirely and completely due to my pal Tammy Oxifen.  They have absolutely nothing to do with self-medication with tubs of Qoola frozen yoghurt, chocolate-covered ju jubes and jeroboams of champs.  Which leads me to the quote of the day:

"I drink my champagne when I am happy and when

 I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone.  When I have company, I consider it obligatory to trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am.  Otherwise, I never touch it unless I'm thirsty."

Madame Lily Bollinger, prominent champagne-house owner.

Cheers, everyone!