Rebel Yell: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

The head injury has facilitated a full rebellion, a coup, against who I thought I was: industrious, adventurer, moderation-ater moderated by rashness.  All of it has become verboten.

At Turnbull Wildlife Refuge

I watch TV (less and less now), my house has gone to crap (Huck and I are finally working as a team again to put it back together, slowly), and Adventuresome Me is now a homebody shy of unfamiliar faces and places where I might get lost (although I fly today for Seattle... familiar but further afield than I've been recently), and I've experienced a horrifying and extreme medically necessary laziness where my typical impetuousness and sudden bursts of energy and decisiveness are all ultimately destructive under these conditions.  Even moderation is too much.  I've required a consisted level of torpor that's driven me nearly insane.

And what has lifted me from this near-death ennui?  What makes no demands on my so-easily-exhausted eyes and ears?

Food. Glorious Food!

Mixed with an inability to exercise... well, the inevitable is happening.  I failed to calculate or care all that much about reconfiguring my caloric intake to match my new and reduced daily needs.  I have no idea what the numbers are because I have never owned a scale and I have never owned a scale because I have been, largley, the same weitght my entire adult life, I think. All I know is that my pants don't fit, along with most of my shirts and skirts and unders.  Shoes all seem fine still.  The practical problem is that I don't care to buy a whole new wardrobe.  So I picked up a few sweat pant versions of skirts and there we have it.

I worried this would happen right from the beginning.  Immediately, I could see that even if this lasted the mere 3 months that it does in 85% of cases, I would come out much softer than before.  So I developed a regime of low stress, low dizzy factor, reclining yoga poses to at least preserve flexibility. They were the sort of exercises (think savasana) where I would forget I was doing them or fall asleep and I'd be no worse for the wear.  But then when my brain began to awaken from it's deep freeze, even those exercises became overwhelming.  And anyway, they weren't about caloric burn, but rather flexibility, and clinging to old routines to keep from feeling like I was just drifting in space without a tether.

The gains were stayed for a while because my hunger hormones were off line.  I had no way to gauge when to eat, so I ate by the clock and eye-balled my stomach size.  Unfortunately, I still don't have a good way to tell when I'm full.  So I eat until I am bored with the flavor.  But in this here little life of mine, the boredom threshold has gotten a little high.

Mother's Day in a camas field.

I've been mostly the same weight my whole life, except for a few notable issues. Nearly twenty years ago I stress-ate entire pies in a sitting, but then I stress-digested them too and ended up so thin my underwear wouldn't stay up and my doctor threatened to hospitalize me.  I was also super sick during my first trimester with Blue and then got sick again in India during my third trimester.  After that semi-large girl was born, I weighed less than I had in high school.  But with Coyote, I gained a good amount, as one should, and had no problem loosing it and felt comfortable and maternal in my soft body.

A friend of mine with similar health issues has also experienced a muscle-to-adipose conversion over the course of her convalescence.  I confessed to her that I have never dieted and had no idea how to go about getting into my clothes again.  "Well don't ask me!" She said. "I have a history of dieting a little to well.  If we follow my plan, we'll lose more than we want, in very little time. And then they will hospitalize us."  Ok.  Well, that's not what we need.  I think it would be terrible to have a fraught history of dieting, either in excess or yo-yo-ing.



Once, an acquaintance asked me how I stayed thin.  I have never thought of myself as thin, rather, average. I told her I had no idea, it was likely genetic and I was probably the wrong person to ask.  But she insisted that I was probably doing something very different that she was and she watched me closely for an afternoon, pointing out all the things I did different.  Now, I'd like to remember what she said.  What did I used to do...

She said something about how we don't do fast food.  We still don't. It's not hard to do when you can't have wheat.  And there was the portion control and the vast difference between her bowl of ice cream and mine.  So maybe I could start there, with the ice cream.

Yeah, that's it.  Better portion control.  Less ice cream. I decided.

Then I went grocery shopping, and the good kind of ice cream was on a great sale.  So I bought a few tubs.  And when I got home, I unloaded all the groceries and was tired and it was lunch time.  So I had a large portion-uncontrolled bowl of ice cream and then a smaller bowl of a different variety for dessert.  And then I threw in a few radishes from the garden at the end.

So... that's dieting by Sarajoy, in a nutshell.

There is something deliciously rebellious in considering a healthy, good-for-you plan and then not really adhering to it all. The more I think about diets, the more I want a giant bowl of ice cream.  I finally read the label (not for ingredients, which I do all the time, but for calories).  Holy Shit.  Ice cream has a lot of calories! Did you know that?!  I did not.  And it's really too bad.  Ice cream should not have any calories.  That would be fair.  Do you hear me, Universe?!  And also wine.  Wine has calories too.  I never thought of it that way.

But you know what, I kind of feel like I deserve these things and that they shouldn't have consequences and fuck you, Sarajoy, for trying to take it away, or even dole it out.  You and your stupid Libra moderation.  My life has really sucked lately, you don't even now the half of it.  Everything that has fueled me and made my life fun and pleasurable has been taken from me.  Luckily, I have found pleasure in the curiosity and explorations of life in this new state, but it hasn't been easy.  And now my stupid jeans come around and say: looks like you need moderation, girlie!  But ice cream IS moderation, if you look at the big picture.  Ice cream and it's calorie rich friends (home made mayo! hollandaise sauce!) are here to balance out the suckage of this homebody life I did not choose. We haven't even gotten to go out to eat much because of the noise and people and all that.  Not only is it the head injury, it's also my allergy to gluten. I mean, I can't even have cream cheese danishes already because of  the wheat and danishes are Dutch for "love."  (When I was 15 and staying with my uber-stoic maternal grandmother while my parents were out of town, she packed my lunch one day with only an entire six pack of cream cheese danishes.  On the way to school, I peaked and asked her if this was a mistake.  And that super-self-controlled woman glanced at me with a devilish look in her eyes and she GIGGLED.  She giggled.  She said, "Well, if you don't want them, I can take them."  And whenever I bring it up, she still giggles, and shrugs her shoulders.  And I guess I just discovered the food-rebellion gene.)

Anyway, fat and our culture have big issues.  And it confuses me.  Fat isn't any kind of moral statement about a person. What's so bad about extra adipose?  But then, who wants to be fat?  (Not that I'm saying I am, I'm just a few sizes bigger than I used to be).  It's a complicate topic that's well addressed from many different angles all over the internet.  And I worry that by talking about it I'll gross some people out and offend others, especially my friends with more to love and/or are more fat-literate than I.  I don't expect I'll be figuring this all out today.  For now, I'm just confused on what about this issue is me and what is my internalized culture.

At any rate, I'm sure I'll get exercising again soon. It will be a tricky endeavor to burn calories while catering to my shattered vestibular system and light/noise restrictions.  And until then, I'm looking around for painless ways to cut.  For instance, I recently cut out the gobs of honey and cream I was dumping in my morning cup-o-hojicha.  So I like my green tea the British way, what of it?  I'm a woman a the world, it's only natural to combine cultural norms.  But I'm sure there are many prisoners of purity that are happy to hear I'm back on the straight-n-narrow green tea-wise.

I haven't noticed a difference with that, however.  In fact, I may be getting bigger.  So far my diet consists simply of thinking about the calories in what I've eaten (and trying not to mention that out loud around my 13 yo daughter, who's may be at that sensitive stage, or not, it's hard to tell with her, she inherited my recessive stoic genes).  I don't think I'm technically overweight, yet, but I can see it from my back porch.

The Grocery Stories

Since cutting my hair (which I'm still not thrilled with) and becoming brain damaged (STILL not thrilled by that either) I haven't been hit on often. At all. That I know of. It used to be an annoying and inexplicable fact of my curious existence. Even when I was with Huck, they wouldn't hit on me specifically, but they would catch Huck's eye and nod. I wondered if Huck had some secret gay life until Huck explained to me that this was man-code for acknowledging another man's ability to catch a great fish from this great sea.

As explored before, this whole thing bewilders me.  Growing up, I was not "the cute one."  My little sister was and people fawned over her with abandon, at times not even acknowledging my existence.  And she took advantage of the attention, teasing me about how much cuter she was than I. To make matters worse, my mother gave me hair cuts I didn't want.  I cried all night when I got them.  She loved her "bi-level" (AKA Mullette) and longed to spread the joy, telling me I needed a bi-level too because my face was too long, my forehead too big and for some reason, to balance out all this ugliness, I had to get ugly hair cuts too. And on top of that, I had a teeter-totter accident which triggered my mouth to make extra teeth... er... an extra TOOTH, that perched in the middle of my mouth, a giant crack across it. I required multiple surgeries and years of braces to work it all out. In the mean time the kids called me "Saber-tooth Sara," occasionally breaking up the monotony with "Snaggle-tooth."  And I didn't mind.  Because that's all I saw in the mirror too. In addition, many of my clothes were hand-me-downs from the neighbor girl of a totally different coloring.  I looked horrible in those clothes, but they were clothes and my mother always insisted that "life is not a fashion show!" and I had to wear them no matter how they made me feel. Although, it turns out that life is just a little bit of a fashion show, actually. I have always hated looking at photos of myself as a child because they slip me back in to these well-worn neural pathways: that ugly hair, that ugly tooth, those ugly clothes, ugly me.  I have layers and layers, a veritable lasagna, of ugly-girl issues and being hit on has always been bewildering.

10: Trying so hard to feel pretty in my neighbor's annoying clothes

Biologically/evolutionarily, most girls want to be pretty. Fight it as we may, it's a normal fact of being human. Our culture gives us the standards (and we pray those standards are attainable, not near-death experiences), but the desire to meet those standards is standard issue human genetics. And there's also something about pretty that can't be ordinary.  I don't know why.  I don't have this all figured out. I can counter this base desire to be pretty with my good feminist ideals, but pretty is pretty primitive. Nota Bene: 1) pretty is not the most important thing in a person 2) pretty is still unavoidably important to most humans and it's okay to want it. I have read ridiculous essays about how you should never tell girls they're pretty.  We can spin this as religious (vanity!) or mid-guided feminism, but it's all the same thing and it's not going to get the results you want.  It will just leave a girl subject to the vagaries of the beauty industry and the first moron who calls her pretty.  We don't need to emphasize pretty, note it first and foremost, but to ignore it altogether is to pretend away millions of years of evolution.

As a younger child, I was stung by my supposed lack of cute-ness, but my longing to be pretty was on the back burner and did not find a place in my ineffectual, fervent prayers.  My mid-night pinings as a child were 1) to be wise as Solomon and 2) to have red hair (it's now black and gray). In my preteens, pretty would find it's way into my prayers, but those prayers shifted from the non-red-hair-granting dude upstairs, to the more real seeming moon beams that shimmered down through my sky-light on to my bed in my short attic room.  I felt ashamed and shallow for my vain prayers of vanity, but now I understand, I was a biological being, wondering how I would fulfill my biological destiny.

8: Just ignore the tooth and playground hair and tell me I'm pretty in my favorite dress

Instead of being hit on, the only time a stranger has approached me since my head injury was to get in my face at the grocery store and call me "confused and retarded."  I could see his point. This is a snap shot of me grocery shopping in those days, about a year ago: sunglasses (to keep out the glare from the bright overhead lights), earplugs (to keep out the fuzzy music and annoying announcements), a loosely fitted baseball cap pulled down over my eyes (to keep all of the unnecessary packaging and signage from overwhelming me), and moving slowly to avoid the zooming sensation that having no peripheral vision produces when you move.  But I couldn't ever move as slowly as I wanted to because there was always a time limit on how long I could be in a store.  I tried to rationalize his comment, which unfortunately made it through my foam earplugs, saying he was probably talking to himself, or that it was just like being hit on with someone breaking in to your private world to tell you want they think of you, as if you needed to know.  But it really wasn't like being hit on very much. I could tell because this comment stung my eyes like onions and the words punched me in my stomach. Someone checking me out or saying hello never did that.

This is just one of the many reasons I don't really like people any more. In theory, people are amazing.  But the reality is iffy. I mean, there are some that I like because I trust them, but strangers, man, fuck strangers.  I have no idea what I'm going to get from them. And my mind is not fast enough on it's feet to handle the wide variety of possible interactions. I also don't feel like explaining myself any more, which can increase awkwardness.  I look normal, why don't I act normal? It's actually none of your business. I used to blurt out to people that I'd had a head injury and didn't understand things anymore. I can engage with people pretty normally now, with people that I know.  But with people I don't know, or people I know I can't trust, I still talk very slowly and can get lost in my own sentence. The impulse to explain myself is still there, but suppressed under some amount of resignation and cynicism. There was a time I wanted to explain; I hoped that people would be better if they knew there was medical reason why my IQ points all seemed to be scattered like bowling pins. But I've come to realize that if you're an asshole, you're just an asshole, facts aren't really something that will transform you into being the good person I hoped you were.

At one store, the staff has to ask the customers what we're up to today.  It's the new "how are you."  So a while ago, I worked really hard to sort out the question and finally I responded honestly: "I don't know."  I keep a list in my car and a pile of sticky notes on the dashboard.  Each note has the time and place I need to be written in sharpie.  When I get there, I discard the top note so that when I get back in the car I see the next place I am supposed to be and when.  Without these devices that I organize the night before, I can get pretty lost. Although I am getting much better and can actually go without the sticky notes some days. But back then, I was not better and without looking at my cheat sheets, I really had no idea what I was up to. And just as I was leaving, I suddenly remembered, in my own head, all by myself, where I was going next, so I blurted it out, "Neuro-psychology!!!"  "What's that?" the cashier laughed.  "I have a head injury!" Oh goody! I was remembering everything! And in a grocery store with lights and noise! What a success! "I go to learn how to interact with people. She explains people to me and tells me why they do things! And how I can think better!" By the look on that cashiers face I realized that this is not something you yell about excitedly at the grocery store. But then she wanted to know everything: how I got hit, would I ever get better, will I ever work again. It was kind of weird and confusing and she was a little judgmental, with a dose of "Well, you look fine to me!" (Here I thought she was a cashier, but she's actually an expert both in medicine and me! You would not believe how many medical experts are peppered about disguised as cashiers and middle school teachers and office managers. Some days, I just want to draw a fake scar on my head so I don't have to explain or endure the 20 questions, I'll-be-the-judge-of-that-myself, and well-you-look-fine-to-me ignorant ridiculousness).  There's a nice way to say this, actually: Coyote's Dentist, "Wow. I never would have guessed. You look great."

I am definitely better than that now.  And also I would not bother to dig in my head for personal information for a format question from a cashier. But I am also not quite up to "flirty repartee" levels of human interaction. And that is where this little discourse brings us.

7: Lucky Seven, freckled with love

I was digging in the bulk peanuts at our local natural food grocery which shares the same name as my husband. Also in this aisle was a man facing the other direction, looking at the wine.  He had this salt and pepper hair, like a younger Richard Gere and he was wearing a very expensive looking cashmere overcoat and suit.  I mean, I actually don't know a thing about expensive suits and over coats, but to my untrained po-dunk-city eye it looked exquisitely expensive, nicer than anything I've ever seen in person.  I couldn't bring myself to look him over the rest of the way, I was so overwhelmed my the beauty of his hair (am I old enough to be checking out men with gray streaked hair?! wonders the woman with gray-streaked hair) and his suit.  Now, I have heard that this wealth is attractive to women and I have thought myself above all of this evolutionary non-sense.  I had talked myself out of the idea that pretty mattered to me and I was fairly convinced that I had out-evolved my species into being a sapiosexual, turned on by intelligence alone. It's not that money-ed men are completely foreign to me; I'd once dated a man who owned personal jets and had bodyguards, but that was all secondary to his adorable Ghandi look and sweet disposition. But there were not even words at this here store, just the look of money. I am apparently not that evolved. Surprised and confused by myself, I returned to my task of scooping out peanuts for pad thai.

But then the cashmere coat said "hi."  And there was no one else around, so I guessed it was either me, or his bluetooth. So, without really looking him in the eye, I cocked my head in his direction and said "hi."  I actually have no idea what he looked like, really.  I couldn't look him fully in the face because I had the distinct feeling that he was so beautiful that I would burst in to flames if I actually looked him in the face, like he was God. For all I really know, he may have been a wall-eyed, chinless salamander. But I couldn't risk exploding into to flames, not in the grocery store.
And I hoped that little "hi" would satisfy him and end this exchange because I noticed that I was wearing clothes completely unworthy of a cashmere overcoat. I was wearing jeans that seriously needed a belt ("Oh, that was it." Huck said later).  I was wearing a slouchy, very old (but still quite serviceable) red bamboo hoodie, unzipped.  And beneath that, the piece de resistance, a garish purple tee-shirt with a giant white unicorn on it and advice of dubitable merit: "Always be yourself, unless you can be a unicorn, then always be a unicorn." Blue got if for me for Christmas.  Also, I had the feeling that I was breaking out, right at that moment.("I don't see a thing," Huck said later.)

9: Unicorns FOREVER, Baby!

So then the beautiful suit leans in and says, "No, I mean hiiii."  And I could understand nothing about this moment. This stranger was not being an asshole. But just what was this man, this money-ed alpha-male doing? He just thought he'd dress up in the fanciest suit Spokane has ever seen, head out to the store, pick up a $62 bottle of wine (I noticed) and a unicorn-festooned, pimply-faced, married floozy from the health food store?  Or was he looking to get high, and thought I looked like a likely supplier? Did he know me, but had just forgotten my name (that actually happened once... I was worried I was being hit on, but it turns out some guy I'd known in India with was just trying to get my attention but couldn't remember my name)? Or was he really just being nice? Did he maybe need directions somewhere? Or was he actually letting me know he thought I, lowly little me, was... pretty?

So, carefully avoiding eye contact with the god, I groaned loudly. And ran.

What the hell is wrong with me? Discuss.

Kidding, Please don't.

I'm addressing this with trained professionals. If this little silly episode has one thing to show me, it's that I want to re-open myself up to goodness. In order to do that, I feel I need to be able to weather the bumps of general human interaction too. And I'm not sure I'm there yet. But with each positive interaction, I want to open up a little more to the world.

Around this time, some childhood photos surfaced... one's I've never seen before, ones without any standard neural pathways. And for the first time, I saw myself through my own eyes, unclouded by the opinions of the adults of my childhood.  I saw myself without comparison to my little sister, as others always had. I saw the little girl in those photos and she was gorgeous, eyes full of dreams and mischief and life.  Beautiful. Shame on the grown-ups for not having noticed. I'm not going to follow in their footsteps, step in line with their narratives. I wanted to reach through time, and chub that cherub's cheeks and tell her, yes, you are as beautiful as a person can be. She always has been and she always will be, forever, and nothing anyone ever said changes that.  And I like to say that nothing anyone says in any grocery store can add or subtract to the truth. But that "hi" really did help and that "retarded" really did hurt.  So lets say that I strive for a solid sense of inner beauty that's untouchable by this volatile world. That child, me, I am beautiful. And by beautiful I mean beautiful and loveable and worthy of all the good things life has. I feel ridiculous going on about my inner child, but it feels true, and it seems that the best way to dispose of that lasagna of ugly-girl issues and disability vulnerability is to go back in time, inside me. That precious child is still here. And she deserves
to know the truth.

Chillin' at Bloedell with the Cool Kids

The Purse-uit of Happiness

When I told Huck that most women have multiple purses he went all agape at me.

"It's TRUE!" I insisted.
"Well, how would that even work?!" He asked, as if I'd just described a foursome involving a house plant and a license plate, "Isn't that sort of unnecessarily complicated?"
"I don't know. I imagine they dump the contents from one bag to another and sally forth."
"But why?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"

My purses tend toward the small side, just big enough to keep my wallet from making my pants pockets look too manly and my phone from butt-dialing (although my phone has been known to cheek dial while I'm talking. Apparently a rather large smile or my cry-face can dial in someone else to the conversation, which is always what you want when you are bawling hysterically. In that moment what you want is to hear the voice of an aunt you haven't seen in a decade to suddenly interrupt your wailing on your husband's cell-shoulder with "What? Who is this? What's going on?")  I usually also try to have room for lip balm, ear plugs, head ache drugs, pens, and an impossibly small pad of paper that makes me record my thoughts-on-the-go in such abbreviated fashion as to be rendered meaningless, and/or haiku-ish: river, flow, mountains, spring, melt, time, new, always.  However, with my current appointment-heavy, waiting-room lifestyle, I find I need to bring many more amusements with me.  I tire of reading in the waiting room magazines about the Sydney Olympics and Martha Stewart's 2009 Thanksgiving feast. Facebook is great for a few small-print moments of palm-sized amusement.  But I need more: water and snacks, my big full-thought-ready journal and my books (now that I can read pretty well again).  I need several for any mood that might strike: poetry (Billy Collins Horoscopes for the Dead), spirituality (Pema Chodron's The Wisdom of No Escape because I can't escape my head injury), sudoku (in pen! for a higher stakes drama experience) and my current love which I want to marry and make babies with: Just Kids by Patti Smith.  So I've been stuffing my wallet in to a tight-squeeze purse and then dumping that in with my runaway's satchel of provisions and favorite things in a giant reusable grocery-store-branded bag.  And finally I thought: why not a real, honest-to-gosh woman-size purse?

I don't love purses the way most women seem to. They all look the same to me  (except once, I found myself accidentally on the front lines of a fad with a thrilling knock-off giraffe print purse that fancy strangers on the streets of San Francisco commented on).  Generally, I'm not keen on spending money on generic looking things. Wait. Nope. That's not true.  Last year, everyone was obliged to check out my awesome new tires which still give me a little kick every time I get in my car and I'm 100% certain they look like every other tire, except tractor, bicycle, and lawn mower.  But it's really about the performance, grip, and low road noise rather than looks with that foursome. 

To cut down on the high cost relative to the low benefit that makes up my purse ownership, I've checked out the offerings at thrift stores, but used purses apparently give me the creeps.  I can buy a great variety of used items but lingerie, socks, gloves, hats and purses, anything with a terminal insert factor, are all out of the question.  I want these things, especially purses, to be virgin.

Time for a real purse

purse-free or die

Coyote and I ended up at the mall recently and I took the opportunity to peruse the women's purse section at JCPenney, a store that I actually like (Joe Fresh and A.N.A. lines specifically) despite it's stodgy history as being the source of the most embarrassing underwear my mother every bought me as a child (as a young teen I'd specifically requested Garfield bikini briefs, as a freaked out mom of a young teen, my mother specifically heard only "Garfield belly-button covering briefs" which were ridiculous, specifically ridicule-us at slumber parties and in locker rooms).

Coyote was not happy about this wrong turn of events into the women's purse section and soon began to complain of physical ailments, chief among them: "Mom, some thing seems to be wrong with my throat."  "Hmmm?" I intoned as I shuffled around the uninspiring shelves and racks.  "I'm not gagging."  Yes, it was a problem for him that he was in the women's purse section AND he wasn't gagging.

(I inexplicably and habitually seem to describe the purse section as "women's". I have yet to see a "man's" purse section, which would make the women's purse section actually the gender neutral purse section, right?) 

I found a fine, large "hobo bag" (I looked up the terms for purses! And that is one of the weirder ones and, realistically, out of your usual hobo price range. Curiously there are no bags labeled "tramp bags", "bum bags" or even "runaway satchels"!) that settled on my shoulder like it belonged there, squatters rights and all.  And it was turquoise, which has been my color of choice lately.  I tried to sway my family to go 50's turqouise on the trim of our house, but I was out voted. They all staunchly stuck with the classic dark green, "for literary considerations," Huck said. And by that he meant Green Gables which is not even his native religion, but he was required to convert for marriage.  But I got my consolation prize: the two dining room archways. And now this purse.

The purse was too expensive for me.  If I specify the price here, I'll worry that half of my dear readers would be like: holy shit, that's WAY TOO much for a purse.  And the other half would be like: OMG, that's so embarassing, are you sure it wasn't used? Did someone throw up in it?  But those fears are irrational.  What would really happen is that half the people I know would be like: whatev's, I love you just the way you are, purse or no purse.  And the other half would be like: criticize, criticize, criticize (I don't actually know what we're talking about!) Criticize. Cricticize.

Girls and their purses: sheesh! My card from 1978

I returned later, coupon in hand, to find two left.  One was stuffed full of clothes that look like they had a close encounter with the pilfering kind.  And even that was too much prior use for my comfort.  But when the other had a production flaw, I plugged my nose and bought the tainted one, the one with the sullied reputation. And I'm inordinately happy with it. And Huck bought me a shiny turquoise necklace to match. Apparently "turquoise" is a love language.

Little Miss Adventure

To celebrate Huck's new job, which is in every possible way a profoundly better fit for him than his old one, we decided to stay at the Davenport, Spokane's stay-cation of choice. The newer building, the Tower, as it's called, is done in a safari style with taxidermied and bronze statues of African animals, complex stained-glass ceilings and walls, ornate chandeliers and a crap-ton of jungle prints.  It is a pretty stunning set up that seems a little imperial/colonial, like, if the hotel had it's druthers the whole place would be staffed with scrawny little black boys you'd call "boy." Spokane doesn't have a real connection to African themes but what it does have is a long and rich history of classism that's unusual for the Northwest. It's an old, old railroad and mining money town run by just a few families. So the African theme is a little suspect here, but beautifully executed nonetheless.

My friend, it's been so long since I saw you

The ironic thing about that 10th floor room was that it looked directly in to Huck's old office.  He was able to point out each desk, name the framed awards, and label the binders on the book shelf. 

I could've stay-cationed alone. I needed break from my life but being alone wasn't appealing to me, especially since half the crap I need a break from is my own brain, so I opted for a few hours instead of the whole shebang. All I did in my hour or two alone was watch TV, which was pretty overwhelming.  For those, like me, who live under rocks, you should know that TV shows now have multiple things going on: quotes and votes and little e-paperdolls roaming around the bottom of the screen. I am not able to handle that much stuff and I can't filter it out. I did not enjoy my time alone.

Huck and I left the kids watching the Olympics (the thing you miss when you don't have regular TV) and we trotted over to our gluten-friendly favorite, the Wild Sage. It was full but quietly humming, which meant that I could handle it. Eating out didn't used to be much of a treat since what we did at home was once better than anything we'd find out in the world. This meal was a true treat, especially in comparison to what's been going on during the head injury era ("Lots and lots of frozen pizza" - Blue.  Oh god, I hope it's been cooked...).

1:30 am the fire alarms in the hotel all went off.  And they beeped and beeped and beeped. And announced and announced and announced that we all had to evacuate the hotel.  I kinda wished the recorded announcement would have been more like the elevator.  The Tower elevator announces in a sultry and breathy voice "Going Dooown." Huck said the "on you" is implied.  I joked later that the announcement should have been like that: "I've having an eeemergencyyyy, nooooow."  Huck responded in the elevator voice, "It's so hotttt in here!"

As you may remember, I was involved in a hotel fire nearly 20 years ago.  I worked graveyard at an old old hotel in Petersburg, Alaska.  I'm not wanting to detail the whole night, but I was brave, actually, and did what I needed to do, which in the early part involved an utterly failed attempt to vacuum soot off a wedding cake where I ended up punching it full of nozzle prints.  I also evacuated all the guests which involved crawling along the top floor beneath several feet of thick, billowing black smoke, dimming lights, trying to find the one last guest who, it turned out was staying at her lover's house, just using the hotel bill as a cover.  The building collapsed, took other buildings with it. And I was left with some PTSD which has made me behave is some funny ways over the years, including but not limited to running out of an apartment naked because I awoke to the smell of smoke which turned out to be a neighbor's cigarette and nothing more, checking smoke detectors in every hotel I stayed in for years, foolishly running in to a burning building and dragging a man out, among other hilarious forms of fear.

Scandia House, December 16, 1994

As you can imagine, I was fully triggered. The idea that the place could actually be on fire was very real to me in a way that I'm not sure anyone else was experiencing as they joked and jostled in the fast moving hoard in the stairwell. I tried not to think about the fact that if I collapsed from fear, my children would be panicked and I would probably be trampled by the drunk girls giggling and stumbling down behind us. I focused more on the fact that this part of the hotel had been built in 2007, had all current fire-prevention standards, the stairwell was un-burnable cement. Around floor 4 there was intense smoke smell, but that was more cigar than anything else.  Out in 20 degrees, we waited, finally heading over to the old building's ornate lobby for warmth and chairs. Being only 10 minutes from home, we discussed just returning.  But, my god, a queen size bed at the Davenport instead of the full size at home... I just couldn't walk away from that.

We all worked hard to calm our racing hearts and eventually fell asleep in the Davenport Tower at 3:30 AM.

Yellow Willow at home at Slavin Reserve

The pool was big draw for this stay-cation.  Spokane has no indoor public pools, which I find odd.  I've lived in smaller towns with more pool (Pullman, Hello!).  The last time I'd swam was in July and I was very nervous and uncomfortable with the way the water messed with my non-existent equilibrium.  So I delicately, slowly entered.  And I felt fine, if a little cold, and I began doing laps, without the somersaults at the walls, of course. I worked hard, to the limit of my ability.  I swam fast.  I felt incredible, powerful, great in my body. It was all muscle memory (from that one year on swim team during which I was a disaster, ignored by the coach because my build is more skier/cowgirl (solid saddle padding with high trot-tolerance up top.  Seriously, at the dude ranch where I worked we were almost all built the same) than a shouldery swimmer until one day I swam a heat that so embarrassed our team that he finally taught me how to move and I finally began to improve) propelling me joyfully through the water, and my mind was happily bored. I recently tried Tai Chi and although I love the Qi Gong movements associated with it, it's over-all too complex for my mind right now.  The swimming was simple and I could do it and I felt like I could do it.  And then the kids and I played "water-bending wars." And I felt happy and amazing.

Left to right: T-Bone's ass, My ass filling the saddle, T-Bone (a goofy horse), Home Ranch, CO 1998

Huck, sidelined without his suit, got all emotional noting that I could never have done that even a few months ago. I'm getting better. It's all getting better.  And it wasn't even the end of February.

Buoyed by my success, I set a goal.  I would hike Slavin Reserve's (the spot with my favorite yellow willows and my heart aches with missing them) two miles of uneven terrain in June. I used to back pack for days on end, sometimes with a baby on my back. I SHOULD be able to do it right?  I might even join a gym with a pool! So, I enthusiastically leaned in to life.  I donned a pedometer.  The first day I did 3500 steps.  The second day 4500.  I even cross country skied (with 20 years of muscle memory) out my front door for 20 minutes. I'd skipped skiing all last winter because at this time last year my big challenge was to sit outside, upright, for 10 minutes a day.  And then... that pedometer... I'm not a competitive person. Except with myself. I ramped it up to 6500 foot steps.  And then... well let's let the pedometer tell the tale: 2000 steps. I crashed hard, so hard, into a downward spiral of exhaustion, migraine, anxiety and sleeplessness. My reset button, Cranial Sacral Therapy, got sick and had to cancel. For more than a week, on into March, I hit my head against rock bottom, day after day.  I was too out of it to be depressed.  But depressing it was.

Me in my world map jacket, 3rd from L, Ski Class, Copper River Basin, Alaska, Jan 1994

The lag time between when I can first do something and when I can consistently and routinely do that thing (like walk 1/2 mile, or swim a few laps) is something like 6 months.  The first rush of success is so thrilling and I think: I CAN DO THIS NOW!! I am AMAZING! I am BETTER! and then I can't, and I tumble back down that Sisyphus hill, crashing at the bottom.  Before this, my self-discipline and self-restraint had been a boon; my goal-orientation was a marketable skill (poorly marketed, I admit).  But this has tested it all again and again. My hobby, my goal? It must be this One thing only: healing.  And that path has a mind of it's own.  My self-restraint is applied to not having any other goals as I restrain a self  --that I barely recognize now-- to not having any other goals before Me. It's torture and it looks and feels like the exact opposite of what it is.  Laying around all day is "restraint"?! Yes, yes it is. Pacing. I learned it a year ago in speech therapy and it looks like I have to relearn it again.  Pacing. Again and again I circle back to this spot: healing is my goal, and it can only be approached as an un-goal.  Pacing. Again and again.

I took this photo: the horses let out after a long day's work of pacing themselves for the ranch guests

So, I finally took some heavy hitter pain medication and I don't know if it was the morphine-based medication or the fact that I didn't have a crushing headache, but I spent one fabulous day laying in bed, smiling, totally useless but in the best possible way, too relaxed and happy to be useful. I tried to journal, but my mind was pretty convinced that it was fine if you got most of the letters in a word, and those letters didn't need to be in any particular order for it to be, in essence, that word. I mean, I wkon tahw I nmea.  And that is way better than being too much in pain to be useful.  (Apparently, I just want to be a useful engine for Sir Topham Hatt.)  And there were no rebound headaches.  It stopped the spiral. Sleep and peace returned to me.  And then I got my Cranial Sacral Therapy and I feel a lot better.  But the pedometer is going back in my top drawer again, along with my children's baby teeth and the hat Blue sewed me when she was five, and my swim suit.

But somehow, this whole episode from fire alarms to morphine-ettes was the perfect Sarajoy-sized adventure. I am satisfied. For now.