Microcosm Moment

Today has felt like a completely wasted day. Last night, my daughter called and asked if she could come over and wash “some clothes”.  Sure, I said, not realizing she was going to wash enough clothes to cover the Chinese army.  She arrived at just after 8 a.m., Killer in tow, along with 19 or so baskets of clothes.  I exaggerate, but not by much. There went the day.

Adding to that my neck has been really, REALLY hurting me quite a bit lately. It’s a sharp, hot pain that radiates down the right side just under the occiput, into the the deltoid muscle of the shoulder and down my right arm.  If I balance my head JUST right on my neck, it doesn’t hurt, but the slightest movement off that exact fulcrum point, and it’s excruciating.  So, I called my chiro and he had time to see me today.

He was able to make a couple of very strong adjustments, and I came home put a huge ice pack over my shoulder and took 1200 mg of Motrin. Yes, I know that’s a lot.  The ice helped but then I started with a mild headache.  G went to have lunch with a friend (more on that later) and I switched to heat on the shoulder without much relief. Mostly I stayed on the couch and played with the little dog and watched NCIS reruns on the USA network.

Finally, G came home and my daughter finished with her umpteenth load of clothes and left to go pick up kids from school. Yes, she had been there all day.  My neck and head still hurt and finally I got the bright idea to try G’s TENS unit.  I’m wearing it now, and it seems to be helping. I don’t think I’d be typing here otherwise.

I’m banging away at my NANOWRIMO, which is kind of doing a number on me because it’s more autobiographical in many ways than I had thought it would be and it’s bringing up some tough stuff.  I feel like I’ve opened up a can of discontent within myself, a whole bucket of woulda, coulda, shoulda, and it’s been bothering me. It’s even hard to think about verbalizing it on my tongue, so I have to work with it in the written medium.

Then, just now, I saw G out the window that I look out all day when I’m working.  It faces the side yard where the peach tree and the pergola are.  It’s one of those high basement windows. On the outside, it’s right on the ground, but in here it’s set into a row of built-in storage cabinets that the former owner and builder of the house put in.  When I mentioned what I could see to her the other day, my G came down here, took a peek out the window, then stacked up some old stepping stone high enough for me to just be able to see them, and started putting out the peanuts for the blue jays, just so I could see them from my tiny view during the day.

She’s like that, my wife.  She does things to help people in the smallest ways. She feels too much sometimes and she loses her words sometimes and isn’t always able to verbalize exactly how she feels or what she really wants to say but her heart is always, ALWAYS in the right place.  And no matter what, she always loves me.

I am humbled.