I had plans for my fall break. Communion, the first in months, on Sunday; work, if I could get it, on Tuesday & Wednesday; Yarn Club, finishing the bamboo project, on Thursday, & finally, with my last day of freedom, barbecue with the church. Maybe I’d even invite my neighbor to the barbecue and keep building those community bonds. Instead I woke up on Saturday, not violently ill, but still sick enough I wasn’t going anywhere.
There was a knife in the back of my throat. I finished off the box of tissues, half empty from my last bout of illness, & started in on a roll of toilet paper, but my nose just wouldn’t stop running. In desperation I broke out the old home remedies, vinegar water; spicy food; grapefruit. Some symptoms were mitigated, but I needed one of the cooling menthol lozenges – a little gummy & stale from the lat time the trailer lost power – to keep from crying over my sore throat. On Sunday, the thought of putting my hair up – of moving – sent blinding pain shooting through my cerebellum. I managed to down some Tylenol but the effort sends me back to sleep until my dog drags me outside at nightfall.
I didn’t manage to take communion in church, but the night sky drew me to prayer, communion in a different way. My mother, looking at my picture, sent back a zoomed in section. A blinding star on the horizon, some jerk’s stadium lights that are the bane of my existence. It’s an exercise in futility trying to cut it from my sky studies, it’s on the same angle as the setting sun. Every night the process is the same. I feel better, I look for jobs & tell myself I’ll wake up on time to pick on in the morning before drifting off sometime after midnight. I woke up after noon the whole week, absolutely miserable. My pictures are earlier than usual, & brighter, trying to catch the summer blues before they fade. The exception is a photo taken at sunset, a deep purple ombre & the first true stars on the horizon.
Outside of my daily excursions to relieve the dog & reassure my mother, I spent my week indoors, barely moving, letting YouTube lull me in to mindless complacency enough that I didn’t notice the roach crawling down the wall until it disappeared behind the trash can. That sparked a whirlwind of activity, the familiar chemical funk of spray, & stooping to scoop up the heap of tissues fallen like snow drifts around the can. The activity sent me into a round of nausea, the phlegm, thick & salty in the back of my throat, weighed on my uvula until I was gagging over & over. In the aftermath I collapsed in bed.
When I woke up, I am, not fine, but functional. I ought to do a number of things but instead I read – nothing educational or edifying either, just mindless entertainment of the cheapest variety (quite literally free). I miss asking my neighbor by about 15 minutes, I figure later. It’s fine, the barbecue ran out before she could have ordered it anyway, just another plan derailed. I eat alone.
There are a multitude of think pieces of the meaning of failure when you tried. There are less on the failure to try. I can’t even say I’ve learned my lesson, the house is still a mess & it was a struggle to get out of bed this morning – even with work to motivate me. Two truisms are left, untreated a cold lasts 7 days, treated it only lasts a week; & if you want to make GOD laugh, show Him your plans.
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