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let's turn the furnace on


There's a kind of hollow defiance about the day after you're sick -- things aren't quite right yet but you're determined, very determined to put in the appearance, or at least you tell yourself so, that and other things like, Yes, goddamn, back on schedule, the schedule will do you good,, knowing all the while that coaching yourself is just a little bit *crazy*, it's the kind of motivational bullshit you roll your eyes at when other people do it, but then again it's Day Three and if you don't get out of the house today then you might go the route of the *real* kind of crazy. And that's no good.

Day One happened to be Friday, staying home with Chicken, her and her cold and its mucous weeping from her eyes and nose. But it was okay. We played it low-key, stayed indoors, Chicken sleeping or within the soft confines of her pillow prison, me cleaning the house, then making supper. But later I was tired: the kind of tired that sends you to bed at 8:30. C went out drinking.

So Day Two was my turn, my riotous stomach with its typically unquiet revolution (C calls this 'tricky tummy' and 'having the diary', while I prefer to live in an un-Anne-of-Green-Gables universe). And then I slept a lot, and C wanted to know why the cats couldn't cuddle with me, and by nighttime I had that feeling unique to inmates of hospitals and asylums, that sense of inner bruising you get from not moving enough.

So Day Three I got up and brought Chicken her bottle and made coffee and went through the house collecting C's beer bottles and wine glasses, and I washed the dishes in the sink and generally tidied things up a bit and then walked to my studio. And I noticed that people who are out and about before eight on a Sunday morning are either very upright or very sketchy, and I wondered where on the continuum I would find myself.

Comments

  1. i love this post. feel better, strong.

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  2. Yes, there's an odd wooziness in the hinterland between illness and wellness... hope you feel better soon.

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  3. heh, i coach myself awwwll the time.

    feel (all-the-way) bettah soon.

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  4. perfect - so with you on the early walk to the studio - my fav is always the morning after halloween - driving into town can be like falling down the rabbit hole - I never know whether the people are just making their way home from the party the night before or if they are just getting their day started....

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  5. Reading this I wasn't sure if it was fiction or fact, I'm still not entirely sure, though C and studio point to fact. But what's it matter, it's a damn good read wherever the detail came from.

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  6. Sorry to read that you and oona have been so ill. but it was good fodder for some nice writing ... i had a funk all weekend, which never really happened just loomed on my personal horizon and was annoying.

    feel better soon!

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  7. C went out drinking? Uh-huh. You left out the part where C cleaned the upstairs of the house and did six loads of laundry. And very quietly has been suffering through her own awful cold. :P

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  8. Maggie: tnx.
    Ruby: tnx to you, too.
    Holly: it's all about who you see when you talk to the mirror.
    Jeane: some mornings are more like the Planet of the Apes ... you expect to see some ape ride by on horseback
    Eryl: tnx, I'm glad you liked it.
    Susan: I hate all that looming business.
    Upstart: Yes, you're right, you always get a lot done, even when you're half in the bag.

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  9. Thank you for sharing
    This fabulous work with us
    Good creations

    ReplyDelete

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