Monday, August 26, 2013

Life Is Just Messy

I read an article in the New Yorker today ("What's Wrong With Me?" by Meghan O'Rourke) about the author's experience with an autoimmune disease. It sounded dreadful and she has resigned herself to the fact that she'll always have it and that medical science has no real answers for her. She's on a fairly strict dietary regimen and takes specific supplements and she has good days now as well as bad. Doctors do very much agree that she has the disorder, they just don't have any answers as to how to treat it.

It got me thinking. Some of the things she describes including joint aching, hives, brain fog, a feeling of disassociation, fatigue, a flu-like aching, sound mighty familiar to me. I wonder...
But the bottom line, of course, is that even if I do have some sort of a version of an autoimmune disease or disorder, there's nothing they can do about it and so...well, so what?

Yes. So what?

I didn't do a tenth of what I needed to do today but I did what I could and it was plenty and I'm still doing. I've plugged through this day and haven't lived up to my words about glorying in it very much at all but there have been moments when I've stopped to feel the air with its definite tilt towards fall that have been very fine. I ran by and kissed the boys and they'll be here tomorrow to play. The Rolling Stones T-shirt that I ordered for Owen's birthday has arrived and that gave me a thrill. Oh, how I think he is going to like it! I hope so. They don't sell that shit for cheap.


It's going to be big on him but that's okay. I can't believe he's turning four, a month from today. 

Hank was here all day, doing laundry and waiting for his apartment to be sprayed for fleas. We chatted back and forth as he worked on his trivia material for tonight and I did whatever the hell I was doing. It's always good to spend time with Hank and so yes, that was good. 

It's really all been good. I'm just having some difficulty in bringing myself back to real life. And of course I haven't de-cluttered a damn thing except for the hen house and the only thing I removed was poopy hay and replaced it with clean for the pleasure of the chicken's butts. In fact, I added something to the house- my new, admittedly rather tacky lamp that I got at the Methodist thrift store for two dollars. But I like it.


If I ever do get around to simplifying my bathroom, it'll look even better in there. 

Sigh.

And so that's it. I'm home and all of my chickens are alive and it's been a beautiful day and I got stuff done and it doesn't matter one bit that I didn't get everything done that I wanted to. 

Oh! I almost forgot. On my walk this morning I noticed that the Beauty Berry is coming ripe and I went to take a picture and look what was right in front of my eyes.


Can you see her? Isn't she fierce? Doesn't she look like she's protecting the Beauty Berry with her life? 

Yeah. That's a little glory right there.

Let's all get some sleep and get up and do it again. We may have brain fog and aching joints and fatigue and we may be having trouble readjusting to one thing or another and we may have just entirely TOO MUCH SHIT cluttering up our lives but you know- here we are. And tomorrow will be yet another opportunity for glory or at least interesting experiences. Sometimes we just have to take the time to look.  That's what I think anyway and I could be wrong but maybe I'm not. 

As always...Ms. Moon







10 comments:

  1. I am convinced that no matter how many supplements I take, how well I eat or how much I exercise I am never going to feel good. Perhaps better than I feel now but never good.

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  2. It might just be all the work that you do. You do a lot. I know that we get tired too from working at something all day. But today we took an hour long nap together. Just spooning and it was good.

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  3. Yep, too much shit.
    Tomorrow we will do it all again.
    Namaste baby!

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  4. I can't remember what I used to do in a day, but it seems like it was way more than I do now, and I just don't care either. I want to look at beautiful spiders and buy lamps at thrift stores, too. Small pleasures, when you string them together, make for a pretty full life. Doing isn't what it's cracked up to be. I appreciate the reminder.

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  5. Birdie- The woman in that article (and here it is, here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/26/130826fa_fact_orourke) says that she's realized that the best she's ever going to feel is 80% well. And that's her new normal and she's trying to adjust.

    Syd- As long as there is Ibuprofen, Benadryl and plenty of sleep-time, I'll probably survive. I don't really think I work that hard.

    Ms. Fleur- Yep, we do.

    Andrea- And shouldn't that be okay? To back off from the endless doing which never results in being done and to just take some damn time to enjoy?

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  6. As I clean my house today, I will think of it as my version of cleaning up the "poopy hay." xo

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  7. Believe me - and cherish this! - that it is very very unlikely that you have an autoimmune disease. Why? Because you have the energy to mess around with these two boys and you can cook all that lovely food and look after your garden - in the same day.
    When your immune system has gone haywire you need to charge your batteries an awful lot more, some days several times.
    But all that energetic get up and go is highly overrated anyway.
    Great T shirt!

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  8. Lisa- It's a lot easier to clean out poopy hay than it is to clean a house. Trust me.

    Sabine- Well, as I understand it, there are many levels and many different sorts of syndromes/diseases. You, my love, have had the worst luck of the draw. I do realize that if I have anything autoimmune, it's not so bad.

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  9. I read that article today and also thought of you, wondered what you thought of it. I imagine that when you have the full-blown thing, you are absolutely and thoroughly ill. But the part time thing is debilitating, too -- sometimes it depresses me to think how poisoned we all are in one way or another, but then I have to stifle that panic and imagine that "all is vanity" and "there is nothing new under the sun."

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.