Hypoxia or Euphoria?

I’ve been experiencing a sense of euphoria lately. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, medically, or a bad thing like somethings more wrong than it was. I seem to have come to grips with disability and death. I did that in the summer and fall of 2020. More recently, I’ve become accustomed to the idea of losing my faculties. It was a grieving process beyond that of accepting death. Finally, I came to the idea that these extra days are a gift. It’s one thing for people to do their gratitude journals for Thanksgiving, but I hope what they came to was that their lives really were miracles. Can you stop what you’re doing and feel that? Lately, I’ve been daydreaming, taking flights of fancy around the world and into the depths of space. It’s cheaper and more comfortable than traveling. I credit NASA’s photos from the new Webb telescope and the travel and macro photographers I love. Have you ever seen the smiley-face emojis magnified inside the beach grass? They’re adorable.

More often, I’m looking at my life as a whole journey taken. How did I get from there to here? I never expected to have lived this particular life. It wasn’t what I planned. It was better, the depth of the love, the places I went, the things I tried. I tried a lot of things. I’m glad that I was a person who jumped into experiences. I have lived, worked, and played in a beautiful world with amazing people. I never have told you about the men working at Bell Labs, have I? They loved when someone asked them about their experiments, even as they harbored recent scars on their faces from an unexpected exothermic reaction from an element they were testing. I hope I’ll tell you about those guys sometime.

I keep wondering if the euphoria is from not getting enough oxygen. It goes low sometimes. But I’m going with the flow. A person can’t live forever, you know. Plus, I’ve been having Disney princess moments that stem from the drought, a bad thing that feels like a miracle in the moment. I’ve talked to my wild birds for years, chickadees, hummingbirds, towhees, Pacific wrens, Cooper’s hawks, Stellar’s jays, and juncos. I make a ticking sound whenever I refresh the water in their birdbaths or the hummingbird food. Sometimes, I can tell they’re demanding something, and Mike has more than once been accosted by a hungry hummingbird when the feeders are empty.

Because of the drought, I’ve been watering my garden, the sword ferns, the tree where the Pacific tree frog sings, my maidenhair ferns, hydrangea, Japanese maple, and gardenia. The other day, I sat at my little table as the hose refreshed my hydrangea. I’d recently added some coffee grounds to the soil and it made a puddle. A Pacific wren took a bath in it then rinsed off in the puddle that spilled out under the pot. I was very quiet because the Pacific wrens are so shy.

The next day, hoping to get her to come back, I watered again. This time, I heard the chickadees cheer as I sprayed the Japanese maple. There is a difference in their calls when they want something and when they’re happy. I sat at my table and got us all wet by putting my thumb on the end of the hose and making a sprinkler for them to fly through. They sounded like children laughing. The day after that, it was a flock of hummingbirds and a Douglas squirrel. Usually, the Douglas squirrels don’t come near me. They’re wilder than the European grays.

And yesterday, as I headed to the library to pick up my holds, the chickadees demanded that I make the sprinkler for them again. When I got back home and started up the hose, they cheered and laughed in the rain I made. Maybe I need to buy a sprinkler.

What are the miracles in your life?

Thank you for listening, jules

Flights of Fancy

These days, I go more easily on flights of fancy. People spend thousands of dollars on vacations to experience what I get to do for free when they go on a trip to a different culture but then they complain that the food is too weird.

There is some kind of beauty in having a more tenuous hold on reality than I used to have. I can look at a photograph and get drawn in, lavender fields in France, steep green hills in China. I get to float over them in my mind for as long as I want.

See, the thing I keep holding onto with all my long covid trouble is my students. The poor kids’ minds are being fed the most nutritious mental food injected with the worst spices of boring, hard, and serious. Sometimes, I feel so crappy but then, I sit down with a kid, she mentions chemistry, then we wend our way through the chemistry of cake and snowflake angles, look at videos of the art of repeating fractals, read about the benefits of reintroducing grey wolves into Yellowstone, pop into a book she needs to read, pause on a phrase of beautiful language, then spiral around inside the body talking about the amazing bags of chemical reactions that we are.

After we’re finished, her mind might go to a completely different focus, what her friends are saying on her phone or what other homework she doesn’t want to do right now. I, on the other hand, sit with my eyes closed on my recliner for a rest and can continue the journey of chemical reactions in my mind.

Thank you for listening, jules

Fur Therapy

Do you remember the cat, Blitz, that I wrote a book about and then didn’t finish that last edit? I called the book, Dirty and Afraid. I almost had an agent. I cried giving my elevator pitch for the book in front of a publisher without understanding the reason I cried. It was an ugly cry. There’s no recovery from ugly crying. And then, two months later, I woke up at 2:31 in the morning and knew exactly why this kitten and his fear meant so much to me. He was me. His fear was my fear. I rewrote it to add the part that was missing, but I didn’t finish that last edit before I got sick.

I want to update you about Blitz. He’s still afraid sometimes, like when people drop off packages outside, but he’s not so dirty anymore. He runs up the stairs with me in the morning. At about the third stair from the top, he falls over and throws his legs in the air. You need to understand, he’s like a baby seal, and almost exactly the width of the steps, so when he falls over, he inevitably starts to slide back down the stairs like silly putty and I have to do belly rubs and hold him in place at the same time.

Then, he walks circles on the kitchen floor and yells as I try to make coffee and toast. Me first, me first, me first, I’m hungryyyyyy.

But what I’m here to tell you is that he’s become the zoom therapy cat. How does he know that my kiddo is overwhelmed because school started too fast? At just the right moment, he jumps onto the quilt behind me and rolls over with his legs in the air. How does he know to make her laugh? I have earbuds in. He can’t hear her tone. Both cats have this kind of timing with my students.

Plus, I have had long days of headaches and chest pain. These two cats snuggle in, one on my lap and one on the pillow next to me so I can curl my arm around him. Sometimes, I fall asleep after or tutoring. When I start, I am sometimes on my own but I often wake up with a headache with both cats have cuddled in. Am I just a warming bed for them? Maybe, but Blitz will push his head into my cheek or my hand. He lets me endlessly play with the plush fur on his belly or the little pink pads on his feet. Sometimes, he spreads his toes for me. He only twitches his ears a little when I put my fingers into them. I pet him in my sleep.

It’s boring and lonely reclining on the couch so many hours, so many days, so many months at a time. But I am never alone.

Thank you for listening, jules

Maybe Tomorrow

I’m here. I’ll tell you. Long Covid pacing is a bitch. All I have to do is do one thing I don’t necessarily want to do and what I want to do is pushed back into the oblivion of maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go swimming. Maybe tomorrow I’ll paint something. Okay, I’ll admit. I don’t paint anything but rocks. When they’re dry, I put them back out into the wild, little messages to the world. Once, I visited a friend’s home for lunch and saw one of my rocks in a bowl with other rocks in her living room. She and I were connected in more ways than one. I didn’t tell her it was mine. I haven’t painted any blessing rocks in a long time. I used to think of it as a way to thank the space where I wandered and the other people who wandered there.

Maybe I need to paint some new blessing rocks. I loved doing it because I didn’t hold myself to any standard of beauty. I just tossed the ugly ones deeper in the brush, to bless the little plants that grow wonky in our world.

But first, I have to make my breakfast and go to yet another appointment.

Thank you for listening, jules

Wanting to Talk to a Mirror Touch Synesthete

Today is almost a free day. I have book club later, but I don’t have much else to drain me. I always love starting a free day but when I actually get to it, I almost always use it to rest and that’s disappointing. When I’m mostly through and I realize it, I get a sinking feeling. I know I need to adjust my expectations, but I haven’t yet. Anticipation is giving me grief.

I’m still grieving over lost parts of my brain. My librarian hugged me yesterday. I told her that I miss being myself around my sister, Lily. She met my sister once and they began to talk as if they’d known each other for years. I ended up telling her about this process of grief.

My sister Lily is one of those people who can feel your pain, a mirror touch synesthete. Oliver Sacks’ books reported that it’s a real neurological reaction for some people, to literally feel pain when someone describes pain. I don’t wish that on Lily, to feel pain. She just can’t talk about this. She couldn’t talk about when I felt I was dying either. I had been blacking out and having a very high heart rate back then. Every time I tried to sleep, spinning or floating, I felt I might not wake up. I faced mortality in a way I never had before. A lot of people couldn’t talk about it. Now, I’m grieving over losing parts of my brain, one of the most important events of my life along with accepting my death, and I can’t share it with so many people I love because they feel uncomfortable talking about it. Thank God for Nick and Mike, and for four or five other friends who can sit with these thoughts. Thank God for my librarian friend.

I still miss my sister.

Thank you for listening, jules

Hockey Pucks and Unidentified Wet Lumps

What kind of bullshit can I cheerfully deliver to you today? I’m a jumble-sale of thoughts, not even information: should we talk about the heat wave, the books I’m in love with (The Girl Who Drank the Moon, for one), the reason my hydrangea is lush but isn’t blooming, being gerrymandered into Lake Chelan for the pirmaries, or access to safe abortions? That last ones wouldn’t occur in the chatty side of this blog.

Honestly, I’m happy today, but I’m fatigued and fribbled-fried in my frontal lobe. I can’t think of a thing to grill for dinner, not a damned thing. It’s too hot to go to the grocery store. I want chicken parmesan but I don’t want to heat up the house, stress our minor air-conditioner, cook to an internal temperature of 97 degrees. I wonder if I could make grilled chicken parm work? I’ll bet I could.

If not, it will be one of the vague recipes of a tired mind and my guys will eat it without complaining. I have fed them hockey pucks and unidentifiable wet lumps and they ate them. They even thanked me for my effort.

Thank you for listening, jules

Finding Joy in a Shrinking Cage

Boy, it’s been quiet in here but I’m here right now, even if it’s just for a moment.

I don’t want to talk about long Covid. I really don’t, but my whole life now revolves around pacing and brain fog. If you had to pick one thing a day to do, groceries, having coffee with a friend, having an argument, doing your part-time tutoring job, getting some exercise, or cooking a meal, how would you choose?

I’ve decided that making meals for my guys is important. I clean the cat litter, but I also choose to read books. Yes, reading has become something that’s harder for me and takes a toll. I still choose reading. I also still choose a few friends. Losing friends has been hard. I find myself telling my physical therapists more than I’d tell a friend over the third drink.

Can you see my brain injury in my writing? I’m going to have to let it show eventually. It’s embarrassing, thoroughly embarrassing. But I can’t organize the way I used to. I hear it when I talk, I don’t make as much sense. I used to do all that without a thought. My subconscious mind was smarter than I was, and the organization just happened. The ends of some stories just reached out and touched their beginnings. Now, I make lists and sometimes have trouble following them. It’s mild, but I feel it. Mike and Nick notice. I wonder if some of my friends notice.

And I really didn’t want to talk about my limitations today. But sometimes, it feels like a cage around me. I can look out and see the rest of the world, running freely, but the wires keep me in. The sad part is that I’m not sure those free people can feel the joy of their freedom. I’m learning to feel what joy I have left, but my cage keeps shrinking as I try to be quiet and stay joyful.

Thank you for listening, jules

Having a Lovely Ride

In 1969, when the astronaut on the moon leaped up in his cumbersome suit and hopped higher than he expected, that was the first time I tried to imagine living in a different gravity. I thought about it every time my dad popped the accelerator then let it up on one of those mini hills in Southern Indiana. Momentary weightlessness then crunch. I thought about it every time I pressed back in my seat taking off on a flight. I thought about it in the arc of a swing, light, heavy, light, heavy. I loved altering gravity, even for just a moment.

Now, I live in different gravity than I used to, heavier, most of the time. I wonder, if you floated me in water, would I sink?

Mike calls it a singularity at my feet. If it were simple 2G, I would feel heavy, like on a different planet, but I’d get used to it over time. My heavier gravity shifts suddenly, sometimes makes me feel like I’m in a spiral on a rollercoaster, sometimes makes my vision turn red or black or white at the edges.

It might be fun if I had a better attitude.

Do you like that feeling the bed makes when you’ve had too much to drink?

I feel that every night.

Do you like that moment when your clarity is replaced with euphoria and you know you’ll regret this in the morning?

I feel that three or four times a day. Sometimes, I think I must exist in an alternate universe, one in which everyone around me lives in a parallel one, just out of reach, just outside the influence of my crazy singularity, never quite feeling the whirlpool I’m being sucked into. At Wild Waves, I used to love being spit out into that great toilet ride, the one that swirled me around like I was in orbit around the sun and flushed me through when I got to the center hole. I thought I could live in that spiral forever.

If I only loved being drunk, high, or spinning on a Tilt-a-Whirl all the time, I’d be having a lovely ride.

Thank you for listening, jules