For two days and three nights I've been floating around on fluffy white clouds of pure silence. When your normal reality is one of constant clattering noise, gleeful or angry screaming, flying projectiles, and general chaos, this concept of peace and quiet is a rare gem. Ben took the boys out to the East Coast to visit his parents (they're vacationing in Connecticut) and sisters and all the nieces and nephews.
I bowed out, mentioning dizziness and an unrelenting travel schedule this summer. Also, I'm traveling this coming weekend– I'm going to the west coast! My mother and her sister Marilyn got married 11 years ago on 9/11/99. Then the real 9/11 came along and messed their anniversary up big time. This year, their 11th anniversary, Marilyn decided to reclaim the date. She's having a big party at a deconsecrated church that they own, and lots of my family are heading out there to Portland to celebrate. It's going to be hard traveling for me– the west coast is quite far away, I've noticed, and the flights are not direct and at funky times. Thus it's all the better that I've been utterly and completely resting the last couple days, and I still have today (it's only 9 a.m.) and part of tomorrow too!
So, what do I do when I'm a free woman? Turns out it's mostly read, waste time on the internet, and watch Mad Men, season 1, in a DVD marathon. I eat when I'm hungry and drink when I'm dry. Of course, I had lots of grandiose plans about things I would accomplish, sorting closet and thinning piles of clutter, pulling weeds and tidying up the landscaping, cleaning out the car and catching up on the laundry. But I've done none of that. Nada. Nothing. I walk past it and think, "maybe later," and then sink again into some soft couch or bed, pull up the covers and return to resting. I have a slight head cold, too, which makes it almost acceptable.
The other reality is that I'm still rather dizzy. On Thursday night, due to excessive fatigue, I was out with Ben and had a seriously hard time walking. I needed to be escorted, ladylike, from place to place in the bookstore. This enfeeblement grates on me so! I went to vestibular therapy on Friday and told them all my troubles. They expressed concern and sympathy and did what they could to help. Vince has notified the neurologist that I'm in need of a check-up, and his office called me, and that is pending. I haven't been in to see him since May and as always a lot has changed since then.
But perhaps the Mad Men treatment will work wonders. I just love being horizontal and warm, preferably with a sleeping cat on my feet (as now). I'm also reading a self-help book for the first time since the late 80s. It's very retro I know– I'm reading Women Food and God, which Oprah recommended, and Annie LaMott blurbed, and so it caught my eye. Honestly it's a great book and has been wonderful to have time to read. I'm also reading the stunning Volokhonsky/Pevear translation of War and Peace. My door stop book got lost somehow, so I'm reading it on my Kindle, which has the advantage of not weighing 4 tons. What I have to say about this is, if you tried to read it or were forced to read it years ago in school, you were dealing with a horrible translation. That makes a huge difference. This one is so much better. At the beginning of the introduction, there's a quote from Isaac Bashevis Singer: "If life could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy." When people hear "War and Peace" they think of words like "LONG, difficult, tedious" when indeed the better descriptions would be "gripping, vibrant, page-turner." (In the Kindle age, when there are no pages, will we learn to say "it was a real scroller"?) This is clearly a long joyous project– the hard-copy book was 1200 pages– if and when I finish it, I will have a Russian-themed dinner party to celebrate.
Even lying here in bed I'm still somewhat dizzy. But what's lovely now is that instead of having to somehow get myself up and make myself function, I can just rest and not fight it. This is the very definition of luxury.