Threshold

Generally, I have a high threshold for pain. Shingles before an international flight and three weeks in Turkey? Tooth fractured two days before I leave for a month in a place where people use giant millipede exoskeletons as dental tools? Giant, unidentified lump on my shin that may or may not be a burrowing insect? I'm sure I've felt worse. At the moment, though, I want to cry.

I feel like someone's trying to drive a spike through my forehead, by way of my neck and shoulder blades. I feel like I've been stabbed in the back. And the knife got twisted.

My arms hurt, too, but not as bad. My hips. My knees. My stomach, which might be hunger from not really eating because I want to throw up or just the nausea itself. I'm not sure which.

Other than that, though, and the fever, and the chills, and miscommunication augmented by working remotely, I feel great. I feel like I'm in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine and the creature from a Sigourney Weaver flick is threatening to erupt from my belly while I'm being impaled from the back through my head, but as well as can be expected. I must be on the road to recovery. I have to be. Because I'm over this.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.


Tag: Sick

Aching time

"I should let you go," I said into the phone. "Call Lisa. Say 'Happy Birthday.' I have to go and consider throwing up."

"Good luck with that," she said. "Feel better."

"Thanks."

I wanted to take her advice. I wanted it with every fiber of my aching body, but I just couldn't do it. And so I considered it. Tossing my cookies. I'd managed to avoid it all day, but only because I hadn't eaten. No cookies to toss.

"How are you feelin, little trooper?" a friend emailed me and I admitted to feeling ick. She offered to drop off Theraflu on my doorstep and if I didn't feel better soon, I'd take her up on it.

I felt guilty for complaining. A time zone away, my youngest niece suffered from H1N1 and a respiratory infection. She wasn't doing so well. Her sister who'd cried over missing her time at the pool last night stayed home from school with a fever of 102. The doctor said the whole family had been exposed if not infected. I figured I had no room to talk but I still felt ick.

We were supposed to have a shot clinic at work. Today, actually. I'd already turned down a couple of offers at the doctor's office and pharmacy because I didn't want to throw off the numbers we needed for work, but INOVA canceled and failed to reschedule. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. I'm already sick.

I didn't even make it into to the office today despite early rising, getting up, getting dressed and ready for work and worrying that I would vomit on the way to the office. There was nothing good to be said for that nor was there anything to sell the possibility of infecting my coworkers and clients or to spread an illness to their families at home. I worked from my big comfy chair, changing back into my pajamas and trying to avoid direct communication with anyone in a heightened state of crankiness.

Communication in terms of the signs at work did nothing for me. Wash your hands. ¡Lávese Las Manos! I couldn't imagine not washing my hands for a full 20 to 30 seconds, singing happy birthday under my breath. Third grade teacher Miss Andrews, of the makeup line and the strawberry wig, assigned bathroom monitors to make sure that we used the facilities and washed our hands. By the end of the year, what might not have been habit in second was long since ingrained. Go whenever you have the chance and always wash your hands. The birthday song came later, but it was there, too.

The antibacterial stuff by the elevators gave me something to do while I waited. The fact that they appeared the same weekend as our first instance of swine flu was just a coincidence, or so the office proclaimed. Eventually, they figured out a system for refilling and everyone seemed to use it. Waiting. Talking. Disinfecting their hands.

"Hey, hi. How you doing? Let me just sanitize while I'm talking to you."

I had antibacterial gel on my desk. Antibacterial wipes for the same. The desk. The keyboard. The phone. I didn't think I'd get sick. I didn't realize that I'd spend eight hours in meetings with a woman who's entire family was diagnosed with the flu the day after we met. I didn't think about my crazy schedule and the way it compromised my immunity, the fact that I was so tired I wanted to cry, the fact that I didn't have time to do anything about it, and now, I had nothing but time.

Aching time.


Tag: Sick

This lonely view

"Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger," Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, but sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I feel downright beaten by life. I don't feel strong at all.

Somebody spit on me in the metro last week, dribbling saliva from above, and I didn't notice until some landed on my shoulder. Later, I found more on my backpack. In my hair. I felt violated even as I realized it wasn't the worst thing in the world, not even my world, and I felt bad about feeling violated.

At times, though, I want to scream to the heavens, to shake my fist and thunder at the clouds, "It's not fair!" They seldom thunder back. For the most part, they pay no notice of me, and on the phone, screaming inside, my mom needed to put down the phone to check on my niece, my goddaughter, one of the precious loves of my life, to make sure the girl was still breathing. Still breathing. My love.

A friend of a friend spent last night in the hospital, his third in a row after being beaten at a Halloween party. A man in his 30s, professional, funny and smart, he only remembered curling up in a ball as strangers kicked him. Days later, he's beating himself up, trying to figure out what he did wrong. If I had to wager, I would bet that he doesn't feel strong at all. In the same position, I wouldn't. In a similar position, I didn't, but maybe we're all just too close to the issues. The injuries.

Maybe the strength comes later, after our wounds have stitched themselves together, and I cannot help but be reminded of a book I just read and the words used to describe heartbreak, first heartbreak, and the way the protagonist's bones felt weak after losing his love.

"As if once having been dislocated from each other they would never again bear quite such romantic weight. And he stopped riding the toboggans and the wooden coasters in the fun parks of Morecambe, not being able to take pleasure in the sensation of being boneless any more, the feeling of having something falling out of him, like hope falling down brittle as calcium dust to the empty shore."
- The Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah Hall

Maybe we're not strong in quite the same places. Maybe our joints ache when the wind blows or when the rain comes. Maybe we limp a little, favor our pains, and we're not stronger at all in the places we're broken. Maybe the strength comes in other ways, the way remaining senses grow with the loss of one, and scar tissue holds us together, thicker and deeper, stronger than the skin around it.

I remember Eddie Vedder in the mountains of Tennessee, crooning out of my dashboard as I faced the red taillights of a traffic jam and too little sleep and an uncertain future, and I didn't understand the lyrics at all. Not really. But I smiled and danced in my seat, sure that I'd end up someplace I wanted to be, eventually, if not anytime soon.

Scar tissue that I wish you saw
Sarcastic mister know it all
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you 'cause
With the birds I'll share
With the birds I'll share
This lonely view
With the birds I'll share
This lonely view

That's one thing I have learned, though, from the insults and injuries, from the times I've been beaten down – the view isn't as lonely as I once thought it would be. My people are there for me, and I, I am there for them.

I offered to pick up the friend of the friend at the hospital. To bring him clothes. To sit and talk or not talk or whatever he wanted because that's what you do. You curl up in a chair and cover yourself with pillows to keep warm. You go to the hospital in the middle of the night or the middle of the morning or when you should be in a meeting that doesn't really matter at all, not in the grand scheme of things. You offer concert tickets. You offer a shoulder, an ear, whatever it takes, and you find pants for a friend.

The view's not lonely at all.


Tag: Life

Out of time

Rain splattered on the sill beyond my head and on the roof outside. Inside and somewhat closer, NPR blared and I reached over to slap at the snooze and silence the noise.

"Not yet," I groaned, but the alarm cell phone sounded within what felt like seconds but might have been minutes and soon after that, NPR started again.

Squinting, I looked through the slats of the shelves that served as a nightstand and made out the time. 5:45. I had already changed back the clock. There was nothing left. I had run out of time.

Rain tapped on the skylight in the hall and drummed the one in the bathroom. Washing my face, I tried to remove the lingering traces of my Halloween costume, the eye makeup that didn't seem to go anywhere but under my eyes, making me look like a raccoon.

My brush seemed to be missing, so I swept my hair into a loose ponytail without it and started layering my clothes. Tights. Jeans. T-shirt. Sweatshirt. Rain coat. I remembered my rule to put on as much as I thought I would need and add two layers but temperatures reported by the morning news lulled me into a false sense of security. I grabbed only one other sweatshirt.

Pink rubber rain boots completed the outfit and I grabbed an umbrella as I walked out the door, the purple one with polka dots that topped off my costume so few hours earlier. Purple dress, pink tights, purple boots at night. Purple trench. Lilac headband.

"You're really... purple," a man said at the drugstore.

"I'm Daphne," I explained, flashing my dress under the trench, the one with lilac bands at the hem and mid-thigh.

"Nice!"

Earlier, en route to the bar where I drop off "Lost Dog" posters proclaiming a reward for sightings of Scooby and meeting with the rest of Mystery, Inc, a couple of women shouted compliments from the windows of their cars, one from across the street and another at an intersection. At the bar, I hugged Fred and Velma, chatted with a couple of pirates, and when the kitchen doors opened, I earned a "hot damn!" from the chef.

At 5:45 in the morning, I wondered if I shouldn't have come home sooner. Skipped the party – the one with the band and Nos Varatu on the wall. Skipped the bar where my friend was asked to participate in the costume contest and nobody seemed to know if I was wearing one. Skipped the bar with the pirates and my Scooby gang or the pictures I took of myself to record my homemade costume. Or the cake that I baked earlier in the day, the walks, the coffee and errands.

None of it mattered, though, at 5:45. I was tired but I couldn't change a thing. I had signed up to volunteer the race and I would go, stand in the rain for five hours or so, splashing in my boots and regretting the lack of another layer, breathing into my gloved hands and stomping my feet as I issued race packets to the 10-mile men, as I marshaled the course, as I directed runners toward the finish line. A friend, a runner, joined me there for a while but eventually, she needed to leave, to shower before brunch as mud from the trail run splattered her back from shoe to shoulder.

The heat ran at full blast the entire way home. I stopped for gas and groceries and pulled up at the same time as my dad. We'd spend the afternoon together – looking at pictures, eating wood-fired pizza, shopping at my favorite bookstore. We'd spend the evening together – laughing, talking and eating entirely too much with some of my favorite book clubbers.

Exhaustion and rain would seep into my bones. A chill. A fatigue. Downtime was a thing of fairy tales and wishes and the extra hour disappeared before I knew it.

"You look... Japanese," the book club hostess told me. "Like anime."

I felt a little two dimensional.

Eventually, I'd crawl into bed and sleep again. I just had conversations to share and thoughts to think. Laughter to let loose, my head thrown back and stomach aching. Cheers to yell. Frozen hands to clap. Life to live. I kept the rain boots on all day, though, and the umbrella in my pocket.


Tag: Life

Falling back

Sunday is my favorite day of the year. I like it more than my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. I always have. The end of Daylight Savings Time.

Granted, I don't really like the part that comes next: Standard Time - but for exactly one day, or rather one night, we get a whole other hour as time taken in spring is given back. An hour with which we can do as we like, which for me means doing nothing at all. I will be sleeping.

Entirely too early on Sunday, I will get up to work a race - from registration to course management to monitoring the finish line. After that, I must bake a cake. Clean my house. Wash my dishes. Later, I'll spend time with my Dad, in town for work, and take him with me to the book club for which I need the cake, the book club in which we'll discuss the Time Travelers Wife. Through it all, I'll think about time and how I never seem to have enough of it, especially not for sleep.

For one hour, though, I have no place to be, nothing to do. No obligations to anyone or anything but myself and the sleeping world around me. We'll fall back together from savings to standard as leaves fall and apples ripen and days get shorter, temperatures get cooler and I start thinking of root vegetables and soup.

Maybe I'll start getting home earlier. Maybe I'll feel a little more ready when the alarm sounds with a bit more hint of a sun in the sky. Maybe.

I almost can't wait but it'll get here soon enough on its own.


Tag: Time

Should have left sooner

It was my own fault. I knew I should have gotten up earlier but I'd barely shut my eyes when morning came. It was just too hard to drag myself from bed and then I had trouble finding my boots, packing my lunch, shutting down the computer that continued to run, trying to process queries that just got slower and slower with more and more data. But I should have left sooner.

That's what I generally mutter under my breath when I see people running for the Metro.

"Should have left sooner," I grumble.

I say the same when I see people doing things that seem stupid or dangerous behind the wheels of their cars, the people who appear too impatient to sit through a light, as if everyone else on the road had decided on joy rides while they, kings and queens of the world, had more important lives and jobs and places to be.

"Should have left sooner."

And I should have. I should have gotten up when the alarm first sounded or second sounded or third. Fourth, even. Anything earlier would have been fine. I should have packed my lunch before bed. Or picked out my outfit. Or both. I could have done any number of things that would have gotten me out the door earlier on a Wednesday morning, but I didn't and I was late.

I already needed to drive to the Metro. I knew I'd be out long after the sun had set and not particularly close to a cab. I wanted to be safe; though, shaving a little time on the morning commute wouldn't hurt.

I climbed into my car, started the engine and gave silent thanks that the gaslight wasn't on yet. I pulled out of my space, rolling back and forward and back again before clearing the cars on either end and pulling onto my narrow street, and then I stopped. In front of me, a van blocked the road. Completely. Utterly. Blocked. With a honk of a horn and a flash of brake lights.

Gripping the wheel, I waited and watched as the driver climbed out of the van. Looking back at my Jeep, he reopened the door and turned on the hazards. As if I couldn't tell that the road was blocked. As if I had anywhere else to go.

The man sauntered up the stairs and rang the doorbell, and an elderly woman appeared. A woman with walker and a visible shake.

"You cannot honk at an elderly woman," I observed under my breath as I waited, as he helped her down the stairs and into the street. Crossing. Crossing. Crossing. Into the van. Made sure she was buckled and the door tightly closed. He stored the walker in back and climbed into the front, strapping his seatbelt and turning off the hazards before moving on.

"Should have left sooner," I berated myself.

Red light. Green going nowhere. Red light again. I took a slightly different route to a very different station, stopping every block or so for a stop sign. Red light. Stop. Near the Metro, I parked my car and climbed out, swinging my bag to my shoulder as a man ran past. He stopped at the top of the escalator, though, blocking my descent and I waited through his confusion.

"Should have left sooner."

A train arrived soon, though, and I found a seat in the crowded car. In front of me, a woman appeared to claim a pole as her own, leaning back with it and blocking the metal for a good three feet or so between upper legs, torso and head. The bit at the bottom seemed rather useless, blocked by her bag and too low for comfort. The part at the top was almost out of reach, and I watched in fascination as she reclined against the Metro pole.

At the other end, at my station, I walked briskly, sidestepping tourists and other travelers. I made it through the turnstile that didn't turn at all but rather retracted and up to the elevator where I pressed the button and waited. Waited. Waited. Finally, the doors opened and I boarded with a couple of others, one who held out his briefcase as the doors started to close and held them ajar.

"Thank you," said a woman who'd been halfway down the hall and the man who came in after her and the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. Eventually, the people stopped coming or he stopped holding and we made it up to the street.

All in all, I wasn't that late. I was almost on time but I definitely wasn't early. I would have felt guilty but there was someone even later than me to the meeting, someone who came in a half hour late. She really should have left sooner.


Tag: Commute

Still working

9:53 PM

That's what it says in the corner of my screen and it seems that I should be done with work for the day. I'd like to be done with work for the day, but there's just a little more I need to do before bed, before sleep and getting up for an 8 a.m. meeting, which means getting up at 6 to walk and work before an 8 a.m. meeting.

Just one more query, or 9. And then I'm done. I swear. As long as that last one works without requiring major modification and dividing it into 12 more.

In the meantime, while waiting for data to run, I caught up on Robin Hood, realizing once again that the man who played Robin reminded me entirely too much of an exboyfriend and I fended questions from a 19-year-old who felt compelled to ask me over and over again if I had a boyfriend.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

She didn't quite grasp by my lack of response that I didn't want to date my relationships with a 19-year-old girl. I didn't generally discuss them with friends or family, much less a friend's niece who thought I was cool.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

I worked on my Halloween costume, stitching ribbon to dress, trying on tights from a ballet company, as I waited. I had spent part of the rainy afternoon on public transportation, buses and walking to a ballet company for pale pink tights have realized the impossibility of finding the aforementioned tights if one was above the age of six and/or didn't have a friend who worked for a ballet company. And then I came home to rewrite my queries.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

I made myself dinner of spinach and mushrooms, tomato and goat cheese. I steamed and sautéed. I baked a potato and heated up squash while my computer did its own thing, while it kept me from doing mine.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

I found myself watching the new episode of Melrose Place, the only episode I'd already seen, and saved myself by watching something equally bad, and I waited for another query to run. They were getting slower and slower.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

I flirted with the idea of changing my phone number. I did respond and say I was still working because I was. I responded and said I didn't want to talk about it, which was silly and I waited for her response. Her question of "why" because that seemed to be next from the 19-year-old girl.

My friends were amused and picked up the cry, sending me messages as I waited in pajamas and frustration for my queries to run.

Heyyyyyy gurl Do u hav a boyfriend?

And I found myself on the couch, in my pajamas, working at 9:53 in the p.m. and strangely unwilling to answer the question of a 19-year-old girl.


Work Home

Golden scare

Sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead, golden and soft, red, amber and green. They crunched underfoot, the ones that had fallen and dried, crackling with every step that I took over the lumpy brick walk of Capitol Hill.

I noticed the skeleton first, the one at the corner by the fence, and I looked into the yard, the deep, deep yard that I passed almost every day without really noticing anything aside from the fence, the flowers, a bit of grass.

Headstones cropped haphazardly out of the lawn. Rest in Peace. I'll be Back. A cross at an angle with a small skeleton clinging for life. Another skeleton appeared to emerge from the dirt as a third reclined in a lawn chair facing the morning sun.

I didn't quite catch it all, commuting as I was and a little embarrassed to stop and gawk at Halloween decorations as much as I enjoyed the holiday. It wasn't for me. It was for kids in costumes, children eagerly anticipating a bit of a thrill and the candy that would follow.

Someone recently mentioned x-raying candy at the local hospital and while I remembered that friends had done the same, we really just sorted, surveying our loot and lamenting the loss of pieces not wrapped. The pieces tossed. We mourned the toothbrushes, pencils and erasers and counting our coins as well as the candy.

We traded sweets, coveting our favorites in other piles. I wanted the Dots and would trade for those. M&Ms. Baby Ruth. Nobody wanted the Black Jack or Bit o' Honey; though, I like them now. Nobody wanted the sticky sweets in orange and black wrappers without any name at all, but we'd eat them eventually. We'd eat all of them eventually, from the bags and buckets that were stored on top of the fridge and doled out a piece at time by our mother.

The decorations on the lawn weren't for me, a woman who went out on Halloween simply to avoid retaliation when I ran out of candy as I always did. A woman who hid in the dark until she realized that she could just go elsewhere, who jumped with every knock on the door because costumed kids kept knocking decide the lack of lights.

The skeletons and ghosts danced for somebody else, someone who didn't have rules against dating anyone met in costume or uniform as much as she loved the chance to be somebody else, anybody else, for just one night.

"What do you want to be?" I asked a friend on Sunday.

She didn't know, so we brainstormed, trying to think of something reasonably easy yet witty, something that would make people think.

"You don't want to go traditional," I noted. "Slutty nurse… slutty cop… slutty mechanic."

"I do like slutty mechanic," she replied, wondering if she'd just look dirty in all the wrong ways.

We brainstormed a while and I thought as I walked. I slowed down a bit, just a little, though, as I passed the lawn, trying to capture it all. The skeleton in the chair and the ghosts blowing in the breeze, the headstones, the bones, the spider and web by an upper story window. Near the spider I saw it, the last bit that I caught – a clown head staring down over a billowing white gown.

"Now that's just creepy," I observed and picked up the pace, shivering a little in cool golden light.


Tag: Commute

So, so tired

At the end of a weekend, I shouldn't be tired but my body aches. My heart. My soul. They all kind of want me to curl up in bed and sleep, despite the mid-afternoon, hour-long nap. In the meantime, until I hit the sheets, I've curled up in my Snuggie to watch a little sideways TV, unwilling or unable to turn my head right side up.

I didn't have plans for the weekend. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Somehow, though, that didn't happen.

Friday night out. A long walk. A couple of drinks. Deep-fried cheesecake served by the chef himself who stopped to talk with my walking companion whom I didn't know that he knew though I knew them both and the world in which I lived shrank just a little. And then a little more.

"I figured out what I want to be for Halloween," I told the bartender.

"What is that?"

"Velma," I replied. "I own about 50 orange sweaters."

"I think I'll be Fred," he said.

Later, I found that they'd already decided on a Scooby theme. Another bartender had decided on Velma herself. Her boyfriend, a server, would go as Shaggy. For a day or two, I'd deliberate and decide against cutting my hair and wearing my glasses.

"I think I'm going to be Daphne," I said.

"You'll have to stay all night!" she exclaimed. "We don't have a Daphne!"

I tried talking another friend, another regular, into coming as Scooby even though he had another party, even though nobody wanted to be the dog and talk funny all night. Eat sandwiches three feet high. Crawl around on all fours. But that all came later.

On Saturday, I picked up a race packet for a friend. I volunteered. Walked several miles and came home to cook, missing most of the rain on the outside, catching too much of the rain inside, and making lunches and dinners for the week. I caught up with more friends and delivered the race packet only to take part of it home again and walk a 10K myself.

I made it to the finish line well before my friend, the nonwalker who'd worked a couple of doubles in a couple of days and couldn't imagine more than the commute from home to metro, much less a walk of more than six miles even if the day dawned clear and bright, a perfect day for a walk. She met me for brunch and to thank me for walking for her. I wanted to thank her for the same.

I couldn't help but smile as I strolled, as I jogged even though I don't really run, even if nobody's chasing me, but I ran. I made decent time to the finish line. I smiled as I talked to a stranger, a woman with a slight limp and encouraging her. I smiled as I ran up the hill at the end. I smiled in the photo that would be published in my friend's name because I didn't walk as myself and I found it funny to pose in front of Iwo Jima in her bib, metal and name.

An hour later, I met her for brunch. A mile away, maybe more, and I’d walked and then stiffened as I sat in the sun. She was late, but I was exactly where I wanted to be. I couldn't imagine anything more perfect than a bit of a breeze and a spot in the sun.

On my way home, after brunch and bloody marys, an egg white omelet that came out quite yellow, a biscuit and bacon served on a plate of its own and given away, another friend called and asked me out for a drink and/or to come to a museum and I almost did. Until I succumbed to a nap. Rallied. Met up with the friend and ran into others, the Velma, the Shaggy, the guy I tried to convince to come as Scooby and then I went shopping for a costume of my own.

Laundry. Cleaning. I found time for that, too. Reading. Writing. Listening to NPR. Watching TV. Somehow, the whole weekend disappeared and suddenly I found myself under a Snuggie on a Sunday night, looking forward to a week of work and the rest it might bring.


Tag: Exhaustion