clickmom

In a bad way

As in…. I’m in a bad way over here. F this agonizing skin pain. The dots are ever so slightly darker but not vile weeping pustules. The skin- still feels as if I’ve got a heatless sunburn. Tonight I took a not hot (realized that the heat was not helping with the pain) shower and slipped into my comfort fleece- which felt as if someone had knitted tiny little bits of broken glass and barbed wire into it. Eventually I ended up crying because this skin pain, reluctant to self diagnose anything here, despite having all the symptoms except a rash, took away the pleasure of my comfort fleece! A girl can only take so much, you know??

On the flip side, the muscles spasms are down to about 30% of what they were a couple of days ago, so that’s a relief. The last two nights I did manage to get some sleep in bed. I’m thinking now that I had two unrelated things happening on the same area of my back. Sounds like me, doesn’t it?

I brought my camera to the woods today. Wouldn’t you know that the light was perfect when I left the house, dark when I got to the woods, and then the sun came out again just as I was leaving two hours later. Seriously!! I want my dream camera that can shoot at any speed without noise. But still, the light could be a wee bit more cooperative.

It is raining tonight, which makes me happy since there is still time for more mushrooms! Hopefully I’ll feel up to going to the good mushroom place in a few days to see what the rain inspired. The good mushroom place is more rugged than the woods I usually go to. It’s steeper, but also, not many people go there so the paths are not as worn and clear. I like it there.

My mushroom buddy’s kid was exposed, and I don’t know how to tell my mushroom buddy that I am not feeling safe around her until we see how this pans out. You know? People just don’t get that I am willing to do what it takes to never know this virus. Or at least not know it until some miracle medication shows up on the scene. I am baffled by those who have basically resumed all social activity. Uh. No thanks.

Well. F**k.

No one will be surprised to hear that I took a bit of a tumble on Monday. I had already had a sh!tty morning. My day started with pulling ANOTHER tick off of my person. This one was on my upper arm. Then I was going to explore some new territory with my mushroom hunting buddy and she was late and frazzled and wanted to stay where we knew the lay of the land. Which would have been fine if I had not stepped into what must have been a gigantic Great Dane sized shit. It smooshed all over the inside and outside and even up the heel of my hiking boots. My buddy left and I knew I had to get my boots over to the stream for a little cleansing stream walk. On my way to the stream I had to walk down probably the steepest hill in the park.

If you know me you know where this going.

Normally I would focus 100% on every step I took down the hill but a nice lady walking by said something to me. And I looked up and stepped at the same time. Next thing I know I’m on my butt. I have no recollection of the tumble but judging by the mud stain in my left knee I’d say that hit the ground and also the shooting pain from my right elbow, I’d say that hit the ground too. But I was sitting.

I had to sit there and gather myself for a minute. Both sweet pea and the dog with the irresponsible owners came over to check up on me. I felt loved.

The elbow subsided, so I was going with funny bone over a break (whew) but when I got to my feet I could tell I wrenched my back and something was off with my left shoulder.

I de-pooped my boots in the stream and went directly back to the car. I came back in the house and within a few hours the weird feeling in my shoulder became a throbbing pain on the inside of my left shoulder blade. Fast forward to yesterday- barely sleeping due to pain for two nights in a row, go to the new town Chiro who I can tell has no idea what to do about the shoulder pain. Today I take myself to the orthopedic urgent care because it’s not getting better.

Despite that the ortho urgent care advertises itself to be a walk in situation they seem shocked when I walk in. Eventually they apologetically tell me that the one doctor who is there has appointments all day but the nurse practitioner can see me. I tell them that’s fine and she turns out to be a really lovely young lady. I tell her about the accident and how bad the pain is and how it isn’t even responding to OTC painkillers and how I must be swollen or something because my skin is painful and everything feels like sandpaper or a bed of nails against it. She sends me off for X-rays and then comes back to tell me that she didn’t think she saw anything on them but would like to get the doctor’s opinion. I say I can wait. And she leaves me in the room so long that I have leaned my head back on the wall and fallen asleep on the chair. Anyways, she eventually comes back and says the doctor is impossibly busy and she will call me when the doctor can get a look, but only if there is something not okay. AND THEN she says it sounds like I might have shingles and that doctors are just realizing that there have been more cases of people having it internally with no outward signs than they realized.

Nooooooooo!!

I start googling the second I get in my car. I realize was scratching my back all weekend. Oh no! I call the doctor doctor and tell his secretary- but I make light of it because I’m still trying to tell myself that it is all tumble related. I really want antiviral meds. She calls me back and says the doctor doesn’t think I have shingles but to call him if I see welts develop. Obviously he hasn’t heard the recent internal shingles news. I need a better doctor. As the afternoon turned into evening I can feel my skin just burning and itching and now there are two red dots that look they could be baby welts near my armpit. Or maybe my underwire bra was jabbing me all morning. What is happening to me??

I’m just angry about it. I’ll check in tomorrow.

Karen II

I got called a Karen again. This time it wasn't at the pharmacy it was at the grocery store. I walked in behind this tiny old white haired old couple and we all know I have a huge soft spot for the elderly. They weren't wearing masks and I naively thought that perhaps they were from a town which doesn't have a mask mandate so I walked over to them and said "This town has a mask mandate" in the gentlest way possible.Hahaha. They looked at me as if I was covered in shit and I quickly realized that they were THAT KIND OF PEOPLE and I didn't want to be there as they spewed out their potentially infectious aerosols so I quickly walked away and from halfway across the store the old woman screams "You're a Karen!" 

W H A T  T H E  H E L L ? ?

Now..... I did not think that was the correct use of Karen, so being the type of person who actually does my research (I want to make a solid argument)  I looked up what a Karen is and the general agreement is that a Karen is a pejorative slang term for an obnoxious, angry, entitled and often racist middle aged white woman who uses her privilege to get her way or police others behavior. One of the descriptions even mentioned that a Karen is typically 35-55 years old and I am just north of 55 so I was even kind of flattered! But in any case a Karen is definitely not someone who simply informs another citizen that their town has a mask mandate. I'm thinking of writing the definition on something so that I can explain it to the plague rats who run around jeopardizing anyone in their way. Except, again, I'd have to be in their air space to do that and I am not comfortable being that close to ONE OF THEM.

In completely other news, I learned that I was telling the truth every time I said that if I didn't have to cook for anyone else I wouldn't be cooking because the husband keeps sleeping through dinner and without Josh here to cook for I end up eating some leftovers or anything else I don't have to cook. Tonight I ate some cold seafood salad I bought earlier int he week, and because I hate doing dishes as much as I hate vacuuming I put my seafood salad in a bowl I had used earlier today to snack on some paleo dairy free fake cheetos, which are surprisingly less nasty than they sound. Yay food allergies! 

insight

I texted my across the street nice neighbor yesterday afternoon. It read "Are you home? I have a bottle of wine and I need someone to drink it with." She texted back "Give me 15 minutes."

I needed to discuss the whole other neighbor thing. I wasn't shaking with anger anymore, but I was still angry.

So, the nice neighbor kept insisting that the rock tossing neighbors were not the kind of people who would do such a thing. I wouldn't know. She has never said a word to me and the one time I went next door to warn her that the mangy bald coyote was sniffing the air and looking towards her kid's play set she listened to me talking and then asked "Who are you?" in such a way that I knew she hadn't listened to a single word I said.

The nice neighbor even pulled up the rock throwing neighbor's facebook page to show me what a lovely woman she is. And, you know, she did seem like a normal person... on facebook. Also, just like me, I learned that she has recently gotten into container gardening (between the deer and the groundhogs we have no other choice here) and I felt like we had so much in common! Also, she grew all these really cool vegetables I never heard of. I know they are vegetables, because she would also show the amazing looking dishes she prepared with her garden bounty. I love trying new foods/recipes to cook. Between mushroom Tony and the rock throwing neighbor I could share seedlings in the spring and then totally have an amazing international garden next summer..... except for the whole rock throwing thing. The nice neighbor's husband finished work while we were still working on that bottle of wine, and he joined us and he pointed out that the rock throwing neighbor didn't mow their own lawn and it was probably their lawn service that was tossing rocks, and between that revelation, and that I figured out it was likely animals dragging their overflowing trash under the fence (still gross) and which was conveniently picked up just in time for my camera not to see the animals grabbing their garbage, I am feeling much better.

And, at least I can go over there and suggest their lawn service is throwing rocks, so now no matter how the rocks (and the shower curtain rod) got onto my side of the fence I can air the problem in the least confrontational way possible, which is great since we still do have to live next to them for the time being.

Also, thanks to trolling the rock tossing neighbor's facebook page I now know that the vining plant they came into my yard to plant at the rear of the part of their fence where they switched from tacky plastic (that doesn't match their house) to a bamboo window shade type section is a grape vine and I have no problem harvesting any grapes which grow on my side. I am trying hard not to focus on that there are no grape cluster remnants on my side right now... and I know the vine was bountiful this summer because she posted photos of her bounty, and I pretty much suspect that they crept onto my side to take what ever grew on my side this summer.. but, still.... I just don't want any neighbor drama.

Now I just have to summon whatever one needs to summon to paste on a big fake smile and go speak with the neighbors who never even said HELLO when we moved in 10 years ago and do the whole "lawn service/rocks" thing. I'm still trying to work out how to approach their unsanitary garbage situation, but I am half way there.

oh my gawd neighbors

When I had the mower serviced early this spring, I joked with the repair guy that the blades might be messed up because every time I mowed along the poorly self installed leaning and crooked 6 foot high fence of our neighbors there were rocks on the path. I jokingly told him that I suspected the neighbors were tossing rocks over their fence. And we laughed over it, except I wasn't totally joking.

Fast forward to two days ago.... Guys. Those MFers are totally throwing rocks over the fence. How do I know? I know because the NEWLY PLACED rocks are literally sitting on top of whatever grass and weeds they fall on. Rocks that emerge from the ground after a frosty winter do not sit on top of grass, leaves and sticks. I also thought for a quick minute that they were throwing bits of household trash over the fence, but then I saw those small items moved the next day and realized that it is possible that a small animal is (I drove past and peered into their yard to see the situation) snatching some of the trash from their 3 overflowing piled high with garbage trash cans and dragging the trash underneath the fence in order to enjoy the neighbor's snack in my delightfully trash free back yard. I just can't with these people! Their trash cans look like what one might see in the popular public park after a beautiful holiday weekend when the park was wall to wall with families picnicking and there wasn't enough trash receptacles. IT IS FRIGGING GROSS. And I do not know what to do about it. Thankfully the wind blows in a direction that if their trash was stenchy, the stench would blow across their front lawn and not towards my house, but still....  So, I have established that they are unsanitary, but the rock thing is of more concern.

It's one thing to be a disgusting trash hoarder and not recognize that your trash might impact someone else, but it is an entirely different thing to intentionally THROW ROCKS ONTO MY LAWN. Because, let's be honest here. My knee jerk reaction is to outdo these people. They might throw rocks, but I am not above throwing whole bags of gravel. (slingshot anyone?) Also, they have an awful lot of new landscaping against that fence. It would be a shame (not) if their plants suddenly started to do poorly.... You know what I mean?

Anyways, I am gathering the mental fortitude to go over there and politely discuss what is happening. Then I plan on calling state agencies or the police because JFC months of garbage stacked on your driveway? Who does that in a place that fronts as a nice respectable suburban town? Also, why are my neighbors always strange?

Did I ever share stories about the hoarder next door from stepford? Or the antisocial people on the other side, whose fist thought at seeing me move in was to hope out loud that my 4 year old and newborn baby wouldn't be climbing the fence of her backyard to swim in her pool. Or the multitude of strange folks that lived in my building in Brooklyn? Like Crazy Dan the drug addict who threw bags of his own shit into our backyard in Manhattan? And yes, we had the treasured apartment with a backyard in Manhattan. That was an awesome backyard. We were too young to know how special it was. Or how less than desirable it was to walk past the building's incinerator/garbage chute receptacle to get to and from our apartment, or live in the mouse infested basement, with the building's laundry machines, convenient and noisy. 

I would like to be surrounded by neighbors who are just normal people.

The look

I feel kind of wrong saying this, but the pandemic and subsequent confinement actually turned out to be a real growth experience for Josh. I actually think he is in a better place right now than if he hadn’t had to lock himself up with his Gen X mom and Boomer dad. Well, I think he will be 100% in a better place once the trauma of confinement wears off. He is definitely in a geographically better place and in his first choice school. BTW, Josh completely knew how much I didn’t want him to go where he went freshman year. I can’t fake anything with that kid. Anyways, he called me out of the blue yesterday while walking to class. We chatted for about 20 minutes. I was happy for the rest of the day. See, what I mean? It was good for him.

Yesterday I took the husband to the nurse who is trying to help him keep his fluid levels consistent and where they should optimally be. She had not met him before so she ran through ALL the questions. She seemed to magically hit every super big health related issue that the husband will not address. First it was his inability to sleep properly because he refuses to use a cpap machine long enough to get used to it. Then it was his refusal to give up diet cola. Then she brought up a “heart healthy diet.” The husband knew he had been exposed and he couldn’t look the nurse in the eye. She asked a few more questions and then she said “Do you have a good support system?” I knew she was talking to me because I saw her looking right at me but the husband who was looking at the floor shrugged and said “Yeah, I guess so..” the nurse and I gave each other the inside joke look. I told her I had good friends to lean on. It was funny.

More plague rats

I just had to go into Walgreens to pick up one of the husband‘s prescriptions and I’m telling you right now my head is about to explode. I walk in there’s a young woman at the cash register checking out with no mask. I walked past her and saying a nice clear voice “There’s a mask mandate in this town.” But I don’t want to stand there and argue with a plague rat, you know? She might breathe on me!

Then I turn to go down an aisle and there’s another dumb blonde b—ch with no mask. Not the same piece of s**t I saw last week either. And I decide I’m going to video them but the checkout girl already left so I took a video of the dumb blonde b—ch. I hate everyone and I need to figure out how to start a local movement were stores refuse entry and or service to anyone not wearing a mask. F##k those people. I hope they all die alone and scared in a pool of their own urine in the beds that they sleep in.

Milking the unintentional compliment

So, I went out to eat (outdoors) with a friend (peanut) for the first time since before the pandemic and all I wanted was a margarita. When the waitress came over she mentioned ID. I said “You’re not going to card me are you?” And she said “By law I have to card anyone under 50.” What a fantastic meal. I can’t remember anything after that but I’m pretty sure the food was good too.

Just kidding. I remember everything. The food was great and we got there super early so there was only one other table there and I chose the table where the wind worked in my favor and wasn’t going to blow anyone else’s hot germy mouth vapor in my direction (oh yes I did check out the wind direction before sitting down). The margarita hit me like a ton of bricks because I had skipped breakfast in anticipation of this tasty meal and that was fantastic too. Peanut and I chatted and told stories and it was so nice to have a two way conversation. So nice. Then I took her to the woods so she could see what a great place I have here to walk sweet pea, since she and I spent hours and hours walking devil dog and her puppy under the power lines due to no dog friendly open space in or around stepford back in the day. The dog friendliness of the new town area is it’s best feature according to me.

Then a new town dog park friend called me just as I was going to order take out for dinner and ended up picking up my takeout and coming over to sit for a couple of hours in my backyard eating and drinking with me that same night. I really appreciated the day off from cooking and hanging out with two friends in one day seemed so freaking normal. It made me so happy and sad at the same time. But whenever I get the sadness I just reminded myself that a 20 year old waitress that it was obvious that I had to be carded because I was under 50. Yeah. I’m going to squeeze out another day of smiling to myself over that one.

my facebook reply

Sonja said she is has become and empty nester. Liz asked her how it was. I answered:

Liz I know how it is. It’s weird! And HARD!! You have no idea how many times a day you’ll glance at their room expecting them to be there. In the grocery store you won’t know how much you should buy of anything. Also, not having to take into account of likes and dislikes with meal planning, so much less laundry, your house feels kind empty and quiet, and you’ll want to tell them the silly details of your day at least 3 times every day but you are afraid you’ll look a bit stalkerish if you text them every time you think of them, and the goal was always independence anyway, so even though you desperately want them to be around to share all of the good things you have to remind yourself every other hour that the good thing is that your child, who is a young adult as far as as the rest of the world is concerned but will always be your child to you, is a fearless conqueror who is doing the best job possible at being that young adult and this is cause for celebration, so you just swallow all that melancholy and learn to celebrate the victories that mean your child is right where they are meant to be and that isn’t right by your side, under your feet, or sulking in their room, whatever… and maybe you can a tiny little slice of credit for helping them get there.

Then they come back for that first college vacation and your house gets crowded, messy (or messier in my case), you have to buy more, cook more, clean more, start paying attention to the comings, goings and needs of more people when you’ve quickly gotten used to the decreased number and you think, “When are you going back to school again?” and you marvel at how much easier it quickly became to be an empty nester.

Freud this

OK I hope this dream is the meaningful and fascinating deep delve into my subconscious that I think it is.

Last night I had a dream that I was leaving my room (which was kind of like a dorm like a room) and I didn’t have enough space to take everything in the room and I had to go through the items one by one, some of the items were hidden, and decide whether it was worth taking or not. The crazy part of it is that everything in the dream was a symbolic item from some other repeating dream that I’ve had in the past. So I’m hoping that this means that in my life I’m ready to let go of the emotional things that don’t serve me anymore and only keep the emotional things that I really need to move forward.

It would make sense to me that that is what my dream means because I was actually thinking yesterday about my new therapist and wether or not this time (out of all the many many fucking times I’ve been in therapy) my head is finally going to get to the better place that I would like my head to get to.

It felt so freeing to decide to leave some of the things behind. Mostly the reasons for leaving things behind me as because they actually had no value. Things that I had to decide not to bring included items like a dented garbage can, some toy figurines, some pictures that looked like paintings but were actually just reproductions printed onto canvas, my bedding (though in some cases, like the bedding, I questioned if I was ever coming back to that place and it was uncertain but doubtful) , bookcases, children’s books, a box of old photographs (I took those but also wondered if I was the last person who would care about them), and I know there was more. I just can’t recall all of it now that I’m awake.

The very end of the dream was me needing to leave quickly and I had my dog with me. (Duh. Would I be me if I didn’t have a dog? Maybe not.) I was invited into the vehicle of someone I felt safe with but decided instead to leave in the vehicle of someone who I was unsure about because something about him was mildly threatening in some vague way that I felt but couldn’t put a finger on. The threatening guy (both were men) couldn’t get his vehicle started so we both stood in the back and looked at it. It wasn’t a normal vehicle it had a boat motor/propeller attached to it and there were all kinds of switches and dials. I’m pretty sure we had to choose between gas and oil… and the car needed one but the boat motor needed the other…maybe? That part is hazy now. I thought I knew what he should do, we tried it, but in the end my suggestion failed and he figured out what he needed to do on his own. When he figured out how to do it and I turned out to be wrong I felt really really small. I wanted to curl up into myself and be silent. The silent thing seems meaningful.

And somehow I feel like this part of the dream represents me always finding guys need to be fixed and whatever I try doesn’t help. We all know we have to figure our own stuff out by ourselves right?

This would make so much sense if I told you that I was drinking or getting high or doing something weird before I went to bed yesterday but I went to bed stone cold sober and I didn’t even take my melatonin so this is all 100% my subconscious talking to me. Which is great because if I can leave the stuff I don’t need behind and get where I need my head to go without having to use medication or be part of a mushroom/LSD experiment or something like that I’d be even happier to be there.

No matter what I’m
Going to believe in this healthy interpretation of my dream. Believing it was healthy will make me happy and able to face whatever bullshit life I have to wade through to get to the BETTER goal part. What do you think? (I actually think signing up for a psilocybin research program would help me get there faster but I’m willing to wait it out and do the work as long as I know I’m really doing it)