HERE'S WHAT 44 LOOKS LIKE

My nurse

15 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "My nurse"

Last week ended with me wanting to high five everyone. My friend and yoga teacher, Kelly, is/has put together a summer camp for adults and she posted a need for workshops and people. Now I’ve been thinking about a photography workshop for some time, one centered around using your camera phone. I figure if I can take nice pictures with my phone, you can too. So I presented the idea to Kelly and she was so enthusiastic about it, that it made me want to jump up and down. Tickets are on sale now for Camp Wildling and I’ve had a sneak peek at the entire schedule. If you’ve ever had a dream to attend that camp from Parent Trap, this is your chance. Then, I put my name down on the volunteer list for this year’s AIDS Walk Open and I got asked to do a meditation workshop for wellness week at work. The very best part that ended the week was something I did at work that was a little outside of my wheelhouse. It involved basically writing a program to do a bunch of stuff on a microscope. And it worked! It worked really well!

High five!

Then Sunday morning around 4 AM, I woke up sweaty and nauseated. My body felt like it had been used as a punching bag. When Michael came in my room later that morning, I burst into tears and he cancelled our dinner reservations for my birthday dinner that night. I spent the next two days laying around, drinking water and occasionally eating a saltine cracker. I did eat a bagel with cream cheese and lox on the second day and had some regrets about that food choice. I laid around another day, ate a pb&j and a taco, both of which tasted like ash or mold but stayed in place. So I’m back to work today moving at half my usual speed, but living and breathing and keeping food down. Winner! So far, I am the only one in the house to be struck with this. Michael thinks it was food poisoning. I’m not sure that I have ever had food poisoning so I don’t know. I am very paranoid that Michael’s going to come down with it next, assuming it was not a poisoning situation.

So, forty four looks five pounds lighter than forty three. I have been hankering for a spa day and there is a plan in the works for this once we take care of other things first. I can just tag the last few days on as a spa treatment, the colon cleanse treatment. I don’t recommend it. The massage and facial are much better options, but if you’re feeling puffy and just want to reset everything, food poisoning…I mean a colon cleanse is the way to go. Really, I’d rather not celebrate my birthday on my actual birthday anyway. The Shitty Ghost of Birthdays’ Past tends to overshadow any attempts at a nice birthday. So when things settle down, I will spend an afternoon hanging out in a steam room, getting massaged and scrubbed. I will eat a dozen oysters on the half-shell with a Caesar salad and wash it all down with a Pimm’s cup. Michael keeps telling me how sorry he is that I was sick on my birthday and every time he says it, I just shrug.

It’s one day. One day out of every year. Sure, it’s meant to be celebrated with candles and cake, but honestly, there was serious doubt that I would even make it that first day. Birth was traumatic. Who wants to celebrate that? Celebration comes in the days that follow, when it looks like you’re actually going to survive. Well, it looks like I have survived. Now it’s time to celebrate and I might just spend the rest of the year celebrating. I am really excited about the things I have planned for this year.

SLIPPING UNDER

Praying

2 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Praying"

I’ve been out with a nasty head cold that’s floating around the office. I still feel like a bit of a zombie even though I am awake, showered and dressed, sitting at my desk. I have my slides for a presentation I’m working on open, along with a paper about achieving high levels of simultaneous amplification of RNA and DNA. I said that paper is open, not that I’m actually grasping the vernacular. I will have read this paper by the end of the day. I swear it. I will also write up a new protocol for running a batch of slides on the spinning disk.

Goals. I’ve got them.

Last night Micheal asked me if I was going to make it to work today and I replied with a confident yes. In truth, I felt better on Tuesday. I had just slept poorly the previous night, tossing and turning. I would wake up sweaty and then wake up again an hour later freezing. So I gave it another day. I emerged back into the world just in time to be reminded not to forget about the significance of this date. Which is stupid because some dates, no matter how hard I’ve tried, seem to never erase themselves from my memory. Chris, Todd and I sat staring blankly at the TV in Galileo’s, slightly numb and wondering how it was possible that we found ourselves glued to the TV watching scenes of terror that were uncannily familiar to the ones we watched just six years previous when the Murrah building was bombed.

Maybe I should have taken an extra day.

I could not because I already feel guilty for taking those first two days. I feel guilty and bad about a lot of things. Last week’s holiday and conference stuff messed up my gym routine and my yoga practice. Half of this week was spent laying on the couch, feeling like a poopsicle. I am super paranoid about giving this virus to Michael and have asked him half a thousand times if he’s feeling okay. Just forget it if he sneezes or coughs. I might be overdosing us on vitamin C. I received a vintage camera and I managed to purchase the wrong film so I can’t test the camera. Then the actual film for the camera is expensive and so I have to be serious about the pictures I take with it. I think maybe I should have not been so impulsive when I saw the camera and was all “I want it!” Not because the film is expensive but because I don’t have the talent required to use this camera. Then today, my facebook timeline is clogged up with “Never forget!” and images of rubble. I think, of course I’ll never forget. This horrific event in history inspired J to go fucking save the world.

I feel myself beginning to slip under and I wonder how long I can hold my breath this time. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three…

We all have our battles.

NO DOGS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS MOVIE

When you lose your shit at the vet clinic, they hand you the whole box of tissues. Josephine is getting X-Rayed. Waiting on some news.

2 Likes, 3 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "When you lose your shit at the vet clinic, they hand you the whole box of tissues. Josephine is..."

When I got home from work on Friday, Josephine was still not better. She’d had diarrhea all over my bed. Michael said that she drank a bunch of water and the puked it back up on the rug. She was still lethargic. So I called the veterinarian’s office and they told me to bring her back in. I explained to the vet how Josephine seemed to get worse after her visit on Thursday. She stopped drinking water and she would bury herself in leaves next to the fence outside. She behaved like a dog that was holing up to die. Even Michael was worried. As I talked to the vet, I had to pause and say “I’m sorry, but I’m barely keeping my shit together right now.” Then I started crying. The veterinarian and the technician did their best to comfort me, but they were concerned too. The medicine they gave Josephine on Thursday was supposed to last twenty four hours and was known to be the best anti-nausea medication on the market. The next step was X-rays and blood work and fluids.

The veterinarian went over Josephine’s X-rays with me. I got to see Josephine’s insides, which looked good except for the empty stomach and her tiny irritated colon. Blood work came back with flying colors. My puppy was really dehydrated and tired from not getting any rest from all the up and down to the backyard to use the bathroom. They gave her fluids and medication for her colon and sent us home. Michael and I forced her meds down and then I made her some chicken and rice. She still was not interested in it, but she did drink some water. At around three the next morning, she woke me up to go outside and walked right over to her food bowl. It was the moment I knew she was going to be okay. We had one more incident of upchucked water all over my bed (I have done so much laundry since Thursday) and that was it. She’s still not 100%, but she’s definitely feeling better and Michael and I have sighed with relief.

Part of me wants to say that I was slightly over reacting to Josephine’s illness, like maybe I was panicking. The more rational side of myself knows that I behaved appropriately in the given situation. Trust me when I say that if you could have seen Josephine, you might have panicked too. The last dog I took to the vet who was behaving as sickly as Josephine, was Hooper. Hooper ended up being full of tumors and had to be put to forever sleep. That was the icing on the shit cake of that year. 2012 was the year I became a true country western song. I lost my husband and my dog. I did my fair share of crying and drowning sorrows in wine. I guess I’m just lucky I didn’t lose my house. That’s usually how those songs go. This scene with Josephine was just way to familiar to a tragic scene I’ve been a part of before. It was stressful and scary and all of that has to leave the body in some shape or form. This time around those wonder twins took on the form of ugly crying in the veterinarian’s office.

We’re starting this week on the upswing. And as long as I can ignore this patch of poison ivy on my wrist, we plan to end the week on a high note. Go Monday!

THANKFUL FRIDAY

One thorn

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 6 likes

I've been sick. Really, I'm still sick. Michael is sick. The Cabbage missed two days of school this week because she was sick. She's the only one that's feeling better. I'm trying not to harbor ill will over it. I stayed home two days this week with a fever. By the second day, I was running out of crap to watch on TV and bored with inactivity. I decided to wash all of the comforters, Lysol the pillows and the rest of the house and change the sheets on the beds. It's a challenge to change the sheets on my bed on a good day. The mattress sits down into the bed frame and the bed is pressed up against one wall. I always feel like I'm roping and tying up a calf while I am wrangling the fitted sheet onto the bed. On a bad day, the act of putting that fitted sheet onto the bed feels like the last thing you'll ever do. But I did it! We all slept on clean sheets that night. 

Some times at the end of a week I find that I am truly thankful for the simplest of things. Particularly when that week has been emotionally and physically difficult. I have been quick to anger and easily brought to tears. My patience is thin and my give a shit level is low (or high depending on how you look at it). I communicate in the least amount of words I can get by with just to be on the safe side of not snapping a head off or hurting feelings. I've taken very few pictures and written very few words. I've shoved ugly memories away and wondered why after five years it doesn't get easier. It just gets more complicated. I am happy with the direction my life has taken, yet sad about. Guilty not guilty. Not lonely but lonely. Missing without missing.

These are weeks when gratitude takes effort. I am thankful for Kleenex and ibuprofen. I am thankful for those clean sheets I put on the bed even though the act of doing so almost made me pass out. I am thankful for the Spring like temperatures we have here today. I am thankful that I am no longer running a fever. I am thankful for lemons and honey and echinacea. I am thankful for kind notes from friends. I am thankful for you.

Here's to a weekend of healing and a beautiful Thankful Friday. 

AND PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

I think I'm going to start a Birthday tradition with this Pimm's cup #westportcafekcmo

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I have a cold/sinus infection. I'm not going to say it is the flu because I got a flu shot this year and, By Golly, I'm not about admit that I got stabbed in the arm for no reason. All this is just a build up of mucus that's irritating the top back of my throat while at the same time making the insides of my ears itch. The cold medicine, while not really doing much to get rid of that mucus, has coated my entire head in cotton candy. Not so much delicious cotton candy, but super sticky cotton candy. It's making it hard for me to be here. Also, I don't have much to say. 

Saturday, we went to the Mid America RV show and learned that we could tow something a little bigger than the original popup we had intended on purchasing. This left us with more questions than answers. So we left the RV show and drove way out to the east side of town to visit the dealership where we were probably going to buy so we could look at the RV they didn't have at the show, but did have in the show room. Then we filled out paperwork and put down a deposit and I started to worry about how it was going to fit in the driveway and how we were going to make monthly payments. Then Katrina bought me this super cute retro camper plate set to go in the new camper and I looked at Michael and said "the driveway is not my problem...it's YOUR problem." I just sort of handed him all of the things I was worrying over. Some time in the next two or three weeks we will have a camp trailer parked in our driveway and we are going to have all of the blocks in place to keep it from rolling down hill and into the street.

After that, we drove all the way over to the exact opposite side of town to go to IKEA. We bought a new bookcase system to store the stereo/turntable and records. The old bookcase was leaning slightly and then when we dragged it out of the way, it exploded. No...it just fell apart. We replaced it just before a disaster. At the same time we purchased the bookcase, we also purchased a full length mirror to hang on the bathroom door. We can now see our whole bodies in a reflection. I am not convinced that this was a good purchase. This body will be forty one on Friday. This soon to be forty one year old body has turned shy and would just rather not know what is happening from the neck down. Though, I'm not so sure about the neck up part any more because we just replaced two burnt out bulbs in the bathroom with LED bulbs that say they are "soft white" but we all know that's not true. 

Friday, I have a visit with my lulu massage therapist and Josephine has an appointment to get her hair cut. I have planned nothing else for the day except maybe a matinee of La La Land. We bought an RV for my birthday and a mirror to remind us we are visually growing older. What more does a girl need? 

I DON'T WANT TO CHEW MY VITAMIN

Thorny

"Thorny"

The alternative title for this post was The Noise My Nose Makes, because, holy goats, I kid you not, the other night it sounded like someone was dialing a rotary phone inside my right nostril every time I inhaled. The next night, as I rolled over onto my other side, I felt all the snot in my face shift over to the new side. It made the kind of sound that I image glaciers make as they gouge their way slowly across the earth. I am currently breathing through one nostril. That's actually progress. Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore throat and my right ear aching. I spent the day on the couch mindlessly watching TV. Thursday morning, I got up thinking I might go to work, only to have my body slam back into bed and declare otherwise. Friday morning, I got up, showered and dressed for work only to have my body slam me back down into bed again and say "Not yet." 

So for three days in a row, it has been just me on the couch with sometimes the dog, sometimes the cat or sometimes the cat and dog. I'm kicking myself now for not setting up a camera to do a time lapse. I'm sure it would look very cinematic with me laying in the same spot with the same blank stare while the animals moved around me. Sounds like a scene from a depressing Bridgette Jones kind of movie.  I've been watching a lot of TV. A lot of TV. In three days, I've watched the series finale of Mad Men (Which I don't recommend watching on the anniversary of your husband's death just because of that scene with Birdie and Don talking on the phone about her cancer), five movies, all of season one of the Lizzie Borden Chronicles, and a partial Designing Women marathon on LogoTV. I have also witnessed countless of ads for all of the things a person doesn't even know they need. For some reason the ads for adult gummy vitamins seems to have made the most impression (implantation?). 

Now, when I was a kid, I had Flintstone chewable vitamins like most children of the 80s. I ate them by the handful like candy because they were delicious. When Mom realized we were going through a jar of vitamins a week, she got a bit more diligent on monitoring my vitamin intake. But for a while there, I was eating a handful of sweet tarty yummy multi-vitamin goodness with my breakfast every morning. Ten million strong and growing. What did they expect? The Bayer company made them taste like candy and for a kid who didn't get candy unless it was a holiday, they might as well have just declared a serving size of ten or twenty. One vitamin. Ha! What a joke. Then I grew up. I learned to respect and appreciate my parents decision to limit our candy exposure. Thanks to them, I am not a big candy eater. I eat a bite of candy, think "Oh that's lovely." and then set it aside and forget about it for a month or so.

While I was growing up, I also learned to swallow pills and take grown up vitamins. I have been happily swallowing my multi-vitamin ever since. Not to long ago, I ran out of vitamins. I went to the vitamin section of Target and in the one hundred days (or so) since I last purchased vitamins, things on that isle had completely changed. All of the usual pill form vitamins had been replaced with gummy vitamins. Rows and rows of bright colorful gummy vitamins. It was like some Twilight Zone geriatric candy shop. I did not want a gummy vitamin. I take my vitamins in the morning. Gummy fruit flavors do not mix with toothpaste. I don't need to chew my vitamin. I don't need my vitamins to be gooey and stick in my teeth, but there's a little more to this than just eating a vitamin.

Gummy vitamins feel slightly insulting.  Kids get gummy vitamins because they're kids. They like eating chicken pressed into the shape of tiny dinosaurs.  Broccoli is a spoon for cheese or ranch dressing. Kids have to be tricked and bribed into eating things that are good for them. For God sake, they put yogurt in tubes with crazy colors because kids think that its fun to slurp their yogurt and as parents we totally buy into it because it's hard enough getting them to eat anything. I am not a child. I don't need to be tricked or bribed to take a multi-vitamin. I don't need my vitamin to be hip, cool, or sexy. I just need to take a multi-vitamin, preferably one I don't have to chew. I know. I sound curmudgeonry. Like maybe taking a bright pink chewy vitamin would make me less cranky. 

Breathing out of both sides of my nose would make me less cranky.    

THAT UNCOMFORTABLE TWINGE

I know I should be writing and telling you things, but the malaise of hot summer just finally arrived here in KCMO. Michael woke up with a sinus headache and drippy nose on Sunday and I woke up Monday morning with the beginnings of a sore throat. I suspect the Cabbage may have something to do with this or the water park. I always came home from the public pool with some sort of ear/sinus/stomach funk when I was a kid. But I did put clips in the Cabbage's hair, clips that she had clipped to her snotty kleenex while I was brushing her hair. When the Cabbage dropped her sucker outside of Trader Joe's, Michael was the one to pick it up and swish it off in his mouth before handing it back to her. Public pool, snot clips, side walk sucker? Most likely all of the above. I spent yesterday on the couch waiting for my face to just give up and turn inside out. Today it looks like I'm just going to stare off at the computer screen and cough a lot. 

Things are at a standstill around here. The construction on the bathroom still has not started. They did tell me it would be 8-10 weeks before they could start. I just assumed that was something they told everyone, but didn't really mean it. They meant it. I told Michael the other night that he needed to tell me that we'd have a new bathroom by Thanksgiving. He told me that the first thing I should do is take a bath in the the tub. We've already talked about me and baths and cleaning the tub, showering and rinsing the tub again before I can settle in a tub of water. Look, I worked with Legionella for a few years. I still get creeped out when the misters come on in the vegetable isle at the grocery store. I know too much. Any way...we are still waiting for the new bathroom, holding our breaths for a week of inconvenience.

We've also done zip all nothing about sorting out the basement. In fact, I've added three boxes of things from Mom's house to the bazillion other boxes of useless crap. Every time I head in that direction with the intention of making some head way down there, I walk through one cobweb and that's it. I'm done. Really I just don't know where to start. There's too many boxes, too many spiders. Of course it seems like that now because I'm sick. Just the physical act of typing the last two sentences has exhausted me. 

Some day. It's starting to be my new motto. Some day we will have a new bathroom. Some day I'll deal with the basement. Really if that's it on my list of some days, it's not all that bad and I can wait for some day. Until then, I'm going to go blow my nose for the one thousandth time today.