Ice Cream, Screens and Clams at High Tide

After spending way too many days in a fog of pain I’m getting my range of motion back in my neck. It’s not totally there yet but at least I don’t want to crawl under a rock and play kissy-face with a toad to get him to let me share his space. All I’ve wanted to do is hide in a cool, dark place and I’ve discovered that an ice pack wrapped in a kitchen towel and held in place by a chip-clip makes a nice fashion statement. Ice Collars by Jean. My third appointment with the chiropractor was yesterday and I don't need a forth unless I'm not back to normal in a week. The Recuperation Train, she says, is running on schedule. My words, not hers. She talks like an adult.

One of those days when I wanted to cohabitate with a toad I went to an ice cream social at the senior hall instead. It’s a free event and they tend to result in more people wanting to go than the place can hold. So when you get your RSVP approved it’s not fair to those who didn’t, not to show up. I lucked out and sat near two ladies from my Gathering Girls group and our table was dismissed first to get in line to build our own sundaes. The entertainer, a guitarist and singer, was good but I couldn’t turn my head enough to see him and I wasn’t in the mood to hear songs my mom used to play on a Victrola when I was a kid. Listening to those old tunes while in pain made me feel ancient and I wondered, how old does this guy think we are? In between songs, I made my great escape and I only felt half guilty for leaving early. 

On the way home I had an errand to run. I needed to pick up three window screens and return one I had picked up a few days before because the newly replaced screen fabric was baggy. The lady at the counter must have had a cob up her butt because when I (nicely) showed her the problem she said, “Well, that’s what happens when you order fiberglass instead of aluminum.” I was shocked and in no mood to get balled out like that. My voice turned as snippy as hers when I replied: “I’ve had five or six screens redone here over the past few weeks and this one is the only one that looks like it was done by a ten year old! And,” I added, “When I started this process no one told me there WAS an aluminum option.” She took the screen back to the work area and came back with a message that they’d redo it. “Wait in your car and I’ll bring it out when it done.” By the time she brought it out and showed it to me her snippiness was gone, probably because the difference in the screen was so obvious. I went home, took an Aleve, put on my “ice collar” and pouted about mean Mrs. Cob-Up-Her-Butt until I forgave her. Maybe that cob was giving her as much pain as my stiff neck.

Remember Larry the Cable guy? This week I had a service call from my own Larry the Cable Guy. Actually, I got two cable guys for the price of one and one actually looked like Daniel Whitney who played Larry the Cable Guy. He mostly did the work required outside and down the basement while grandson-material-Jason fixed all my issues on the main level and I had many. One of my TV’s picture was breaking up at a certain times of the day (a downstairs issue) one of my remotes wouldn’t hold its programing (an improper setting in the TV) and he set me up with a new remote for the bedroom that glows in the dark. (That's going to save me a ton of stress because pushing the wrong buttons in the dark takes me to places I can't return without an agent on the phone to walk me through it.) I also got a new signal receiver outside since mine was twelve years old and Jason checked the speed of my computer. I was as happy as a clam at high tide when they left but the next morning the problem I called about---the picture breaking up---was back again only worse! Back to square one.

Trivia note: The phrase ‘happy as a clam at high tide’ has been around since at least 1833 when it first appeared in print in a memoir and by 1848 it was included in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms. The theory is it evolved because at high tide clams open up and they look happy in that state. Over the years, we’ve dropped the 'high tide' part and now most people just say, "I'm as happy as a clam." Old metaphors endure because we're too lazy to come up with new ones, but that's also pretty cool when you think about it. I wish I could write a metaphor that a google search two hundred years from now would trace back to me.

I was trying to find a quote or meme about pain to end this blog and it’s clear that society admires people who power through it with smiles and quiet humility. My neck issues will be gone in time if I don’t do anything to inflame it again---I have to curtail my upper body strength training at the YMCA for two weeks---but after the week I’ve had I’ve learned I’m still a little girl at heart; I’ve wanted my mommy, ice cream and a good cry. At least I got the ice cream. ©

A Royal Pain in the Neck

 

After dinner when the heat of the day gets pushed aside by deep shadows in my back yard I’ve been sitting out on my deck reading until the fireflies announce that the light is fading fast. The new book club selection is over 650 pages of foreign words, strange customs and medical terms describing things I don’t want or need to know about. The story centers on a set of twins growing up in a small mission hospital in tumultuous Ethiopia during the ‘50s and ‘60s. If you’re getting the idea that I’m not enjoying the book, you’d be right. But I’m stubborn so I keep reading my required two chapters a night so I’ll get the darn thing finished in time. If there was a movie version of Cutting for Stone I’d cheat and rent it but it’s still in production according to IMDb. I’m only on page 361 but I understand part of the book I haven't read yet takes place in the slums of New York City where one twin becomes a surgeon while the other twin stays behind as surgeon at the mission, but I don’t imagine the change of scenery will make me warm up to the book. The story will still revolve around abject poverty, bloody surgeries and boys with lusty thoughts. After reading pages and pages and PAGES of detailed descriptions of surgeries, I could probably do vasectomies and turn babies around in breach. Crawl up on my kitchen table. I’ll take care of that. Two years on the New York Times Best Sellers List and all I can do is wonder if I’m the only reader who doesn’t understand half of what I’m reading and doesn’t care about the other half.

This evening as I read out on the deck the dog was being a royal pain. Usually he’ll sit quietly watching for rabbits who try unsuccessfully to violate the fence around the neighbor’s vegetable garden and listening intently for the jingle-jangle of dog tags announcing that pitbull’s who live directly behind us have come outside to play. This time of the year we can’t see them but Levi knows when they are happily running around ignoring his whining and barking pleas for me to let him join in their games. Please mom, let me go over there! “No, Levi those big boys could eat you for a snack and still be hunger.” Tonight was different. He wasn’t happy on the deck. Levi wanted to go inside the house, then when he’d get there he’d want to come back outside. Back and forth he went until I finally got tired of being his personal Jack-in-the-box, popping in and out of my chair like a wind-up toy and I went inside with him. Levi wasn’t finished annoying me. He made me follow him into the kitchen where I’d forgotten to feed him. He’s the perfect dog for an old person because there isn’t anything he’ll let slide. Food, water, potty breaks, dental sticks and bed time---he’s very vocal about all these things until he gets through to me that he’s got a schedule fixed in his head and I'm messing with that.

I had a good excuse for forgetting the kibble. I spent the weekend in a lot of pain---not the urinary tract infection kind, that’s gone---and I wasn't even feeding myself. This time it was shoulder and neck pain. I’m not fond of chiropractors, in fact they scare me, having known several people who ended up having a stroke on their tables. But I could feel something was out of place so I called Monday morning and by the time my afternoon appointment was over I was feeling 60% better. I left with instructions to come back if I wasn’t 100% by Wednesday. She thinks I pinched a nerve while sleeping on my side and we had the don’t-crack-my-neck conversation. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m going to have to do it.” She contends that anyone who has a stroke on a chiropractor’s table would have had one within a few hours anyway and having it then, where it’s recognized for what it is, could possibility save a person’s life. She used the example being home alone so you wouldn’t/couldn’t get to the hospital within the four hour window to get the drug to reverse a stroke. I’d rather not get my neck cracked, thank you very much, but I didn’t see a shotgun sitting in the corner to put me out of my misery. She did the dirty deed---without my permission---when I wasn’t expecting it, then she promised that was the worst thing she’d do to me. As I write this on Tuesday night, I can tell I’ll be calling back tomorrow for another treatment. Pain is still a melody playing softly underneath my every move. If I don’t post a blog on Saturday you’ll know the chiropractor killed me. ©

C Week: Chiropractors, Cement, Choices and Classes

It was an exciting day around here. First and foremost I saw my chiropractor about my painful shoulder and neck and things are better in the pain department here on Widowhood Lane. I may have to go back on Monday, but she doesn’t really think it will take more than that to get my bones back to where they belong. Knock on wood, soon I might start sleeping through the night instead of waking up whenever I turn over.

After seeing the doctor, I came home to a driveway full of hunky guys who were bare-chested (in my imagination) and breaking up the concrete in half of my driveway. Darn Michigan weather got too cool for construction workers to strip down to their six packs. A month ago they were here to raise some of the better slabs, but today they were replacing slabs that were too damaged to do anything but remove and start from scratch. I signed the contract back the end of May and I'm so happy to finally get the money for this project out of my checkbook and for the right reason. Seeing it there for so long was making me feel like I could follow my lust and buy a tablet and a bunch of girlie stuff that I really don’t need. These young guys were so personable, down-to-earth and friendly it made me feel good to have them around. They wouldn’t know how to give an elderly woman the you-only-have-half-your-beans-upstairs treatment if they tried. They’ll be back tomorrow before breakfast to pour the new cement. My house cleaner comes tomorrow, too, so I’ll have plenty of conversation that doesn’t involve canine-to-human mind reading.

Yesterday I went for tea with my Red Hat Society sisters which we should call a coffee since we were all drinking Starbucks. For some strange reason that lacks common sense they scheduled another walk-about for September and in the same week as one that was already on the calendar---we usually do just one a month. Normally I wouldn’t care but it felt like there was an undercurrent of politics involved that I wasn't understanding. And the two walk-abouts also fall in the same week that: A) My Senior Hall mystery day trip takes place; B) The dog has to be dropped off and picked up at the kennel the day before and after the trip; C) My Movie and Lunch Club meets, and D) A class I may take at a local college takes place. I can’t do all that in one week and live to tell about it, so I had to make a choice. I stressed my brain out so much deciding you’d think I was making a Sophia’s Choice kind of decision. What to do---the Farmer’s Market followed by omelets at a fancy-do downtown restaurant or the Deer and Elk Park out in the boondocks? Jeez, Jean, just decide and live with it regardless of the politics or power struggle that may be involved! Even with my self-imposed news block out still in place, politics are still finding a way to squirm into my life, even if it's just on this micro-mini level.

The catalog for the senior enrichment classes at the local college came in the mail this week and I’m debating between five classes: 1) Vulnerabilities of Aging: Laughter amid the Tears; 2) World Music Sampler; 3) The Never Ending Frontier (about the North American Cahokia); 4) The Humor of Jean de La Fontaine; and 5) Fun with Metaphors. The one I’m leaning towards is the Metaphors class even though the idea of creating metaphors in a class setting scares me to death. My second choice is the music class. I wish one or the other was in the afternoon to make my choice easier but both are 9:30 to 11:30 and last for four weeks. They also have a drawing class but I’m saving that one for the Fall II semester so I can slide that hobby right into winter when I'll be stuck at home more often than not.

Monday this week I got my first ever massage. I sent a text to my niece afterward, who loves getting full body massages, and I told her she’s going to be sorry she recommended massages after I burn up all her inheritance at the mind/body center. I’d like to try the hot stone & matrix massage next but the therapist who did my back massage said they didn’t do anything for her that a normal massage can't do and they cost a lot more. Keep an eye on me, kids. I just downloaded a free book to my Kindle called Essential Oils for Beginners The Guide to Get Started with Essential Oils and Aromatherapy. When you see a yoga mat and a Hoyer Patient Lift in the house (to help get me off the floor after a yoga session) you’ll know I’ve gone overboard with the holistic healing thing. In the meantime, my plan for getting my mojo back seems to be working. ©