PARKED-AT-HOME

Steal Away A squirrel had its back to me this morning.  I was visually deciphering its bushy tail from its rotund body, noticing the tones of brown in its fur and on the bark of the tree.  It turned and ran.  There was a stroke of red across its eyes, a bandit wearing a mask.  I would like to run. I would like to steal away from this place.

(I feel like crap) except, I copied the previous post from a text I sent to a friend. I haven't shared the worst of me with many people. This is helpful.

Honestly, I am crap. My neck hurts and my back hurts. I have all those symptoms back again of dizziness and headaches. The depression and anxiety are fucking up any positive thoughts I can muster, and I can't think why to get out of bed.  I had my stupid recurring nightmare in which I have to go back to college, and I woke up startled and shaking. My everything hurts.

This morning, I thought about dying.  It would only really matter to my daughter.  Everyone else would get along fine. My body is not giving me this option.  Over the years, I have thought that I would become immobilized, unable to walk.  Permanently.  I thought about this when I moved to Yosemite National Park to live and teach. I thought about how weather is no joke.  I thought about how humans are helpless against the elements.  Cold.  Freezing to death, lost on the trail.  Or Out of water, shriveling to a prune in the heat and drought. Or Simply squashed.  A giant boulder landing on your car. I thought about these things carefully.  I was mindful and safe in Yosemite. I've got this pea-sized boulder in my head.   How do I stay safe from 1.3 cm?

Ten students in track and field passed by yesterday.  I hadn't seen them before.  When childhood sucks, you run.  Literally. Figuratively.  In High school, I ran long distance in between babysitting after school.  Absent more than half the time, I never developed much endurance compared to teammates. At the time, that is what I thought. Looking back, I realize I did pretty good. When I look back on this hydrocephalus / brain tumor recovery time, I think I will conclude that I developed some endurance.  To endure and to have endurance are not quite the same.  And while I have endured some hardships, I haven't felt that I actually possess endurance.  But now I know I do.  Walking to downtown, less than a mile away is a marathon. (Doing it twice in two days is an ironman.) Watching a movie requires me to practice focussing for over an hour, patiently .  The sequestration, while self-imposed in the past, may drive me mad.  Speakin...

It is monotonous to stay in the house. My daughter, home from college for a long weekend to check on me, and I took Uber to Target.  We had a big crack-up with the motorized shopping cart - me driving and her riding on the back as if the cart were a tricycle.  Think Jane Fonda in Grace and Frankie. To move forward, one had to pull the lever on the right, but this confused me when the intention was to turn left.  The thing jerked forward and stopped abruptly, nearly flinging my kid overhead. There is a lot of stuff to navigate in a big store and computing the location of said stuff with chronic dizziness can be a challenge.  I was proud that some of the serpentine driving was intentional, and we did fulfill our objectives - that being to buy chocolate cake mix for M and a basketball.  Mission accomplished, M enjoyed his cake with condensed milk as frosting, and I have taken up basketball.  Mostly, I cross to the park when no-one is there and play a solit...

I am not sure how to wake up. I feel tired, so I stay in bed.  I have rested too long, and I get fidgety.  I feel like crying, but the tears do not come. Something is lodged in me and it and I can't move. I can either cry or write or do neither and have a brain tumor.  Yes, I believe I can get rid of my brain tumor.  If it can be constructed, it can be destructed. The thing about waking up is this.  Prior to being awake, I have been elsewhere.  In waking, I come back to here .  Of course, I must.  I must try to come back fully.  I am not particularly good with transitions. This precipitates the need for a morning routine.  I may also need a mourning routine - some time to cry and let go before I enter into the day. My body needs to come back.  My legs are limp.  My neck hurts from straining in sleep.  I am undecided about hunger.  I begin to inhabit myself. I sit in the kitchen, look out at the p...

I said I was not going to revise, but what I tried to express in my post last night made no sense.   I might need to know what it is I want to say, so now I have a fucking backlog. The backlog is always emotional.

I lossed, apparently, my ability to spell or conjugate in the past tense.  I had to look this word up just now.  I spelled it wrong here on purpose to make the point.  I hope someone out there (preferably one of my students) caught the mistake.  "Know the rules; then, you can break them," I can hear myself chiding. Sometimes, losing is not bad.  My friend J came by for a visit today and upon seeing me motor on my own two feet, he asked, "Hey, where's your walker?" He was referring to the pink durable medical accessory with the pretty flowered crossbeam that my ever-thoughtful boyfriend chose for me at Walgreens. This is the one I was going to take a picture of for this blog to illustrate just how "parked" I am.  There will be no driving.  Apparently, there isn't suppose to be much walking after brain surgery either. "I lost it, " I said, referring to the walker.  I might have been referring to my good mood, my solid mind, my unbreakab...

I had a hard day yesterday.  I am expecting NOT to have hard days after brain surgery.  Maybe, a readjustment of expectations would be helpful. I couldn’t get my brain around the idea that I wasn’t going to be alone for the rest of my life.  That I wasn’t being abandoned by everyone; that the bottom hadn’t just fallen out. It’s 2 am now. I know stories about my mom who fought breast cancer for a while when I was younger than seven.  I have this quilt that she made for dear family members during the time she was sick. The story is that she couldn't sleep at night; she hand-cut diamonds out of yellow and green fabric; hand-pieced them together; quilted the blanket; gave this as a wedding gift to Mark and Etta shortly before she died. What was it like to be in physical pain while your four young children were sleeping upstairs?  Just how excruciating was the emotional pain? Mom, I know you are around me now as I look out at the black p...

This morning, no-one was there.   The entire park was empty.  Not an owner walking a dog. Not a parent out with an early rising toddler. Not three guys with their fishing reels.  I would have thought that at least the fisherman would have been there. It being 7 am. But then, there’s not actually a pond in the park, and I think one can practice casting and reeling in a duffle bag at any hour. There were no volleyers….Later in the day, I would complain about how much noise the guys were making.  About how many times I had to hear “punto” punted through my window. And later in the day, the guys were especially noisy, standing under trees and talking while they waited for the rain to stop.  But in this moment, there was no-one in the park; I was feeling quite lonely.

I am not revising this unless someone pays me. Revision sucks. I might not edit. Listen up my sixth-grade students: know when to use a good excuse not to proofread.   Short term memory loss qualifies. Can you imagine searching for a comma splice and finding it, and then forgetting what you just found and having to find it all over again? (Insert student comment: That’s called English class. )   Mexican Volleyball We are all racist in one way or another.  My Peruvian boyfriend calls the Latin guys who occupy, each evening, the volleyball court across from my front window “The Mexicans.”  Probably, the guys swam from a few other countries too - Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Shockingly, some of my early evening athletes may have arrived at the park via airplane from the lower American continent.   But calling them all Mexican is a hard spike in the volleying of South American social hierarchy. To be fair, my boyfriend evens the score b...