“how much energy do you have? how many spoons?”
I have joined the Y yet again. I’ve never been able to make a membership with the Y stick the way I want it to, but as I have been contemplating my own death I thought about what I would regret. Other than the obvious not taking care of my body, not listening to my body, becoming pretty much disabled at this point, I did think that I would miss having not swum more. Just getting into the water. It is healing, soothing, a world unto itself that I belong in.
When I was growing up I was often in a kind of despair longing to go swimming. We did not have any fresh water on the place, so there was no lake and the ponds were pretty much for the cows which meant there was a lot of shit in them and our parents wouldn’t let us get into them. So whenever I was able to go swimming I was absolutely in heaven even though back then swimming meant a lot of sunburns which I do regret. So I have joined the Y again and even if I only go a couple of times a month, I am not considering that a failure. I love to be in the water and I’m going to get into the water as often as I can.
When I thought about other things that I might regret not doing more of there wasn’t much that made the list. There’s nothing that I want to accomplish badly that I have not accomplished, even though I thought I would write many novels, become a well known poet, all the things that a creative writer thinks about. But I feel that I have done a lot of what I wanted to do. I influenced my students in a good way, hopefully. I was able to do quite a bit of publishing. I did write a novel and get it published as an e-book. I have three books of poems. I’ve done a lot of translation work with a woman in Romania and I have published there, how extensively I cannot know because I don’t always get paper copies of the magazines that I’m published in, but it has been quite a bit. I have also worked with this woman on translating other people’s work into English from the Romanian. I’ve done a lot as a writer and I will continue to do so.
As a visual artist I’ve not done much yet, but that’s OK. Right now I’m trying to figure out what sort of images I can create that would make people happy enough to buy them and based on the attention that I get on Instagram this has to do with beauty. People like it when I draw trees. Treehouses. Suggestions of trees. Flowers, insects, all sorts of little flying creatures. These “fetch the audience” as my friend Katy would say.
I have partied and played and prayed and lifted up mine eyes. I have been in love love love with Dale and discusses any and everything all the time. I have had fabulous conversations with friends all throughout my life. I still have fun with my kids. I have lived in a time without too much unrest in my country and I expect to exit the world before it cracks down the middle. I have love love love and not so much suffering that I cannot withstand it thank you lord lord lords of the mountains and skies.
I do believe that I am sick. Whether this is from my kidneys, my lungs, or just getting older and being so out of shape I do not know. I have recently gained more weight and added more fat to a body that was already far too fat. But I don’t know that that is what is going on exactly. I am too tired and I suspect that my thyroid has tanked again. And what I hate is the fact that I keep saying to myself how tired I am. This is so annoying, this narrative of myself being weak/helpless and feeling bad and, to be honest, incapable of doing things.
I’m wondering if this new feeling of being “disabled” is me finally accepting the facts of my situation and my health or is because of the therapy that I have started doing. As always when I’m asked to pay close attention to my body, things get complicated. Difficult. I become all body, all baby yelling her head off, a solid id-shaped toddler crying out lookie, lookie, lookie. As far as I can tell, now that I’m using “spoon theory” and paying attention to how much energy I actually have in the morning when I wake up…well, I am exhausted after I make breakfast. I am exhausted sometimes just from bending over and putting on socks. I am devastated by putting sheets on the bed, or carrying things up and down the stairs, or throwing myself into a day, a full full day, and getting up first thing in the morning and putting on a pot of something for supper, then making breakfast for me and Dale all the while cleaning the kitchen, probably putting on laundry, maybe vacuuming… cleaning the cabinets, the bathroom, all these things bundled together into a normal day are literally exhausting, it is almost unbearable when I think about. But is it really?
When I don’t think about it, I just do it and I deal with the exhaustion later–I put it off, I delay it. And that’s the thing—am I more tired now that I’m paying attention or am I really tired all the time and I just ignore it and that’s what I’m used to? Ignoring it makes it possible for me to live my life the way I want to live it. And frankly so does pain medication when I do need to take it. But I feel that I am at a threshold and something needs to change.
Hence my new membership with the Y. (James is joining as well to come swimming with me.) I also contacted a personal trainer to see if he or someone else would be able to work with James as a special needs adult with special health needs. But again I am not going to set myself up for failure by trying to find a schedule, times to go, make a routine out of this because I will not do that. I, like most people in the United States, am unwilling to leave my house to go and “exercise.” No, I will be going to move around in the water like a plumpy dumpy fish and be very happy about it. And I will dive in and jump in and make big splashes and be that older woman who is just going at it like she don’t care who’s looking because like, I don’t.
Really.
So we finally have the new stove and the new dishwasher. The new dishwasher I am unsure about. It has the third rack at the top for silverware which I love, but the racks themselves feel rickety and they don’t move in and out very smoothly, which is already getting on my nerves and today is the first day that I have used it. However the stove is a marvel. Induction. The oven on this stove does not heat up the kitchen. So I have removed my trusty well-worn well-loved Breville toaster oven and am determined to learn to fly without it. The only reason I ever got the Breville oven was because I wanted to toast bagels properly which for me is toasted on both sides perfectly. Well the little oven is on its way out because it has stopped toasting bagels perfectly; also even though it is incredibly convenient to have two ovens and it is frankly easier to have one on the countertop than leaning over to open a big oven door, I have found that the counter space that I have created by removing the little oven is extraordinary. It is blowing my mind. I actually have an entire counter free to the left of the stove where I have put a cookbook stand and everything looks so cool and clear. I am very excited about this and I have moved my flour and sugar beneath this counter so that I will have to lean over and pick that up and that may drive me insane over time, but for right now the counter space that I have created is the f-ing bomb.
Yesterday I got up and put on a very large pot of beef stew. It was weird because I’ve never made stew before and it turns out not to be a big deal, but I did slice up the carrots and the potatoes. I have to wear gloves when I do this now; used to the only veggies that messed up my hands were onions and tomatoes, but now I notice an irritation from touching just about anything. And I wear gloves for meat anyway.
Anyhow I’m wondering about the food processor thing again. I have to talk to my friend. Yesterday when I made that beef stew I did not peel the carrots and I did not peel the potatoes. I was like nope, too much work. So if I were to get a food processor would I feel that preparing the vegetables to put into the feed tube would just not be worth it? However maybe I wouldn’t have been so completely exhausted by the end of the day so that I was unable to eat that soup with my family because I had to retire to the upstairs and nurse my headache and my aching aching aching aching shoulder/ neck.
So perhaps a food processor would be worth it and if I’m going to get a food processor I should get the one that everyone recommends which is the Cuisinart 14 cup food processor, the oldie but goodie, the standard food processor in the same way that the KitchenAid mixer is the standard stand mixer.
I don’t know why I belly ache so much about these decisions except that… I don’t know. I bought a Vitamix blender but I only bought it to do smoothies really and I really didn’t want to do anything else with it so I’m worried that I will not use this thing if I buy it but if I do learn how to use it and it makes my life easier would it be worth it? Is the having-to-clean-it-up such a chore that it really wouldn’t be worth dragging it out to use it? I do have the option of always buying frozen cut up vegetables, and or canned vegetables, for making soups and stews and Chili’s. I already do buy frozen chopped onions and this is more expensive than buying onions but I have so much difficulty with handling touching onions that it really seems to be worth it. I don’t like canned whole potatoes for soup, however the diced canned potatoes are “okay.” There is no substitute for fresh potatoes. I suppose I could do that thing where I order it, try it out, and if I don’t want it I can always return it. I can also save money by buying a refurbished one.
I got a carbon steel skillet. I am determined to make this thing a nonstick skillet which is supposed to happen over time. Meanwhile my eggs are sticking to the pan which is annoying. My friend who got the same exact stove as us got a griddle for it because two of the eyes have a bridge function where they work together, but until I’m able to determine whether or not this carbon steel skillet will actually become nonstick I am not willing to buy a “non stick” griddle that will almost certainly get scratches within the first year. I despise non stick.
I need to shake a leg and get out of here for a little while to do a few errands. Then I will come home and feel no doubt completely exhausted. In two weeks I see the internal medicine specialist who should be able to check my thyroid out and see what the hell is going on. When your thyroid doesn’t function properly it’s a little bit like being severely anemic. When I was first diagnosed with hypothyroidism I could barely move across the floor to get to the bathroom. I was that tired. I’m nowhere near that tired now but I’m tired enough to be sick and tired of feeling this way. One thing I do know, too “few spoons” or not, water revives me. Mentally. Physically.
Water is the womb I long to get back into and swim forever.
~r.
