Stacking

(L-R) Me, Bill, who read my script, Bruce, my close buddy, Annabel,
Caryn and Bernard—all long time dear theatre friends.

Friday was a killer. I was the walking dead from 4:00 o’clock till bedtime. And my night was torture—I had to keep getting out of bed and stretching my legs because I had crippling cramps in my arms and legs from all day’s work.

Two-and-a-half cords of wood arrived Friday morning at 8:30—is a huge  pile of wood! I had to bend and pick up every piece to put it in the wheelbarrow. Then I had to pick it up again and either lift it up onto the pile or bend again to put it on the ground. It’s paradise when the pile is waist high and I have to neither lift nor bend.

I’m seventy and fey. This is just too manly for me. Truly: Thank God for my spa!

Zen and the art of wood stacking and schlepping: I thought of each wheelbarrow load as three or four evening fires; I thought of not having to do this, or covering the wood, in winter. I took pride in my diligence and kept thinking about the sap I’d be having at my break. 

I got it all finished except about one quarter of a cord that I’ll do this morning and a large pile of misfit pieces of wood that I will stack separately to use in the studio.

Dr. Bob sells wood each summer so I will put in an order for another six cords next year. I have finally found someone “normal” with whom to do my wood business. No more men peeing in my yard. And Jeff, his delivery boy, is courteous and runway hot.

All the wood was dumped where my vegetable garden will be going next year so next time I’ll be schlepping the wood even farther. I wonder about doing all this at age eighty. Thank goodness for the spa.

I’m going to get right to the wood this morning, while it’s cool. When I finish, Her Highness gets a bath and hair cut at the doggie spa while I read New Yorkers  with a Diet Coke and nice sugary snack in the sunshine somewhere to celebrate being finished with the wood and the tidying of m’lady.

This afternoon I’ll get caught up on domestic chores ignored during all the stacking and tonight—rest!

Wood! And More Wood!

After all the turbulence of Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday was calm.

I kept myself busy.  I took Sheba for a long walk first thing in the morning and then I went into the village where I got my new inhaler and learned how to use it and did some shopping. When I got back, Darrell and Elaine were here.

Darrell’s going to build me another arbor from my grapes, finish my porch and line my driveway with wood runners so that next month I can plant a new front lawn. I also told him I want to go ahead with a wire deer fence and raised beds for vegetables next year.

He’d come to ask for a large box of ancient car engine parts that the previous owner of this place left behind. He took it and in exchange Elaine thinks she’ll be able to gift me a drip watering system for the vegetable garden. I’m thrilled.  

All afternoon I stacked wood. It exhausted me and in the evening I had brutal cramps in my hands from the work. But now I have three cords on site.  

It’s cloudy and cool this summer morning; it’s excellent weather for stacking wood (if you like stacking wood). Another cord has arrived at 8:30 and another chord-and-a-half is on its way. All I’ll do all day is stack wood; by tonight I’ll have stacking fever.

Outcomes

I am so happy to be home; I have been to Hell.

Late Monday night Sheba dug a huge hole in the yard and I was pissed. I didn’t punish her; I just washed her thoroughly because she was covered in dirt. Tuesday morning, just before I left for Vancouver, she did it again and I lost it. I hit her and I paid for it. 

I felt emotionally sick afterwards and on and off all day.

The flight was great and the Canada Line, for the ride into the city, wasn’t overcrowded but once I was on the street everything fell part. By the time I sat down with my friends for breakfast, I’d had four seizures. After breakfast there were two more but the balance of the day wasn’t too bad.

Wednesday morning I’d had another six seizures and by the afternoon I was in a cluster seizure. I could not stop seizing and I could barely breathe. I went to my asthma doctor (whom I admire and love to bits) and he gave me a new inhaler to use with my other one. 

When I seize, I hyperventilate for a bit and that’s a bind with asthma when I am having so many seizures a day. The new medication is a dilator that works differently than the other inhaler I use and it should help me when I have bad days like the past two. 

I am a walking pharmacy.   

•

The good news is that the future of my ladies and my play is decided.

Tuesday morning I met with Bill to hear what he thought about my play. His first words were, “This is not a play.” 

My heart sank, but he had some specific and brilliant suggestions about what to do with it. I, however, have my own plan B as stated here many times: A local show in the art gallery. To do what Bill suggests—rewrite it as a monologue and stage it in a gallery setting—is just too much work. I want to get on to new things and to do that I want to wrap up the life of my ladies. I will find out how the gallery here works and pursue that.

•

Yesterday I could hardly wait to see Sheba for two reasons: I wanted to be back in her good graces after my outburst and I wanted comfort after two days of relentless and exhausting seizures.

When I got home, she was as excited as I was to be reunited. I felt forgiven and loved. She means so much to me when my illness takes me apart. She, Fred and Ethel are blessings as is this paradise where all the horrors of the past two days are kept at bay. 

•

I thought the new drug was working well.

I took a note yesterday to Dr. S. that I had written before I left here. I told her I thought the seizures were over and I questioned the need to continue with her for a while. I felt practically cured except for my speech but I presented yesterday mute, defeated and exhausted after twelve seizures plus a cluster attack.

Plus, I am fucking sick of asking myself: Why? Why this seizure? Why now? What was the trigger? How can I avoid this? How can I stop this?

I’ve been asking these questions and constantly analyzing my messy life because I want to try to “win.” I want to know how to avoid bringing on seizures and bad speech—and because friends ask questions about my ups and downs. But there are no answers; the fact is I can’t, and never will, know why my seizures come. That’s mental illness for you—endless ups and downs with no rhyme or reason.

So now what? After this horror of a visit, what should I learn from it? Should I just never leave here? Is that a good strategy? It would seem so. But Dr. S. says No. She wants to see me every two weeks indefinitely. 

She told me I should keep coming at the end of our session. There was no time to discuss why I should to that so I said: “If you’re going to ask me to come here every two weeks after what I’ve just been through I want to know why. What you are hoping to achieve with me? I need to know; I need a worthwhile goal to help me sustain the horror of coming into the city.” She said that’s where we’ll start next time.

I said: “For two and a half years, I’ve been doing all the talking. Next time it’s your turn. I want to listen and I want to know what you think my future is going to look like. I want to know if I will ever live in a stable landscape.”

At least my play’s future is clear and I'm really grateful for that. It’s going to be put down. But my ladies will rise to glory! I know it.

•

It’s Thursday morning. I am reveling in the glory of being back home. I feel like a soldier home from the war. It was predicted to be cloudy today but the day has broken sunny and it feels good. So did the spa. I can’t remember ever wanting to get in more than I did this morning. The past two days shattered me.

I keep rolling through cycles of “I’m practically cured” to days of endless seizures exactly like when all this started. The past two days said to me: There’s been little progress in terms of recovery. How many times do I have to read/realize that you don’t recover?

I have ten days to myself here to work on the raffle and to go for walks with Sheba. Our walks have become a passion. They do wonders for us both. There’s nothing like the sight of her ahead of me leading me along the path and, even better, when she stops to ensure I’m still following and I see those two lovely eyes that shine only for me.

•

I told Dr. S. about being able to speak if I pretend I’m angry, or sad or I can use any accent on earth to speak but I can’t speak as myself. I can’t be myself. I asked her: “What’s up with that?”

I also told her when that insight hit, I’d cried and had a moment of self-pity. She said it was a profound observation and asked why I’d felt self-pity.

“Because it reminds me of how my life started, in a way. I couldn’t be myself then either because I didn’t know who I was until I was adopted—and then being a Tyrell turned out to something I didn’t want to be. They were dreadful, so it’s like my voice being “stolen” by my illness has something to do with all this not wanting to be me all my life. Now I want to me “me” but I can’t.”

She again said my thinking was profound.

“Good profound?”

“Definitely!”

Our time was up and I knew it, so I said like an announcer on a sensational FOX news broadcast: “Will be expect to be rewarded. Will relief be his reward? Come back in two weeks and find out in our next episode!”

•

I’m totally mute. I spoke Dingo in town. I’m in dreadful shape so spas and Sheba cuddles are the rule of the day.