The Seated View

    I blame the Oat Squares. If it wasn’t for them, the Cosmic Cat wouldn’t have noticed me. My life is been puttering along fairly quietly for a while, with only the standard irritants and minor catastrophes that happens in lives, but July didn't feel that was good enough. July decided to set off enough calamities that my apartment and immediate neighborhood should be reclassified as a disaster zone. Naturally, this has led me to the conclusion that the Cosmic Feline has found me again. You remember the Cosmic Cat , don't you? This is the theory I once developed to explain those times - days, weeks, sometimes months - where there is no let up. No matter where you turn, catastrophes assail you. It is only when you roll over and beg for mercy that the Cat might deign to leave you alone. Because it’s no fun when you’re not resisting. On July 14, I cracked a tooth eating Oat Squares, an event that led to the most expensive half-hour I've ever spent in the dentist chair an...

It's been a bit of a summer. Not weatherwise - it was gorgeous - but in terms of my pain and injury levels. The right shoulder has been bitchy for months and when it finally started simmering down just a little bit after the steroid shot about a month ago, the left one took up the cause, apparently thinking that I’d feel lonely without a hefty dose of pain somewhere in my body (note to shoulders: no, I would not). And then the right shoulder felt left out and just around the shift from August to September freaked out completely, making it really difficult to get anything at all done. About a week ago, when both shoulders appear to have someone healed again, something happened to my back causing it to seize up. Throughout all these various escapades, I threw drugs at the problem and did my best to learn to modify my activities (admittedly, this learning has improved more lately than in the beginning this summer) and because of my new focus on healing my body first, completing th...

I've had a spectacular weekend. That was sarcasm. The unvarnished truth - and this is where the title of this post begins to make sense - is that I picked up a stomach bug. Ordinarily, one of the benefits of having limited shoulder, elbow and wrist movement is that you'd can't touch things like door handles, elevator buttons, etc. (except with a collapsible stick you carry in your purse), which blessedly means I tend not to pick up too many of whatever maladies that are floating about and deposited on public surfaces. Considering my suppressed immune system, this is an excellent thing. However, there's a stomach thing trotting about and despite not knowing anyone who has it, I somehow ended up hosting a rather enthusiastic party for it. I’m thinking of blaming my doctor - she's the one who told me about the thing, citing evidence from the nursing home where she works. I may start calling her Typhoid Mary. It's been fun (again with the sarcasm). It started Thur...

I was watching the Barbara Walters special before the Oscars - and can I just say how very awful the Academy Awards were this year? I'd rather have watched Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White for a couple of hours than watch that impersonal, rushed, yet dragging-into-eternity evening and where was I again? Oh yes, Barbara Walters. Between the bookend interviews of Monique and Sandra Bullock, she showed brief clips from all the Oscar specials she's done and I was surprised to realize how many of them I've seen. Toward the end of the hour, Sandra Bullock turned the tables on Babs and asked one of her famous questions: "in five years, what do you want to have that you don't have now?". And it made me think. After the Big Flare (yes, I've finally relented and have started capitalizing it now), I didn't plan much beyond a day or two for a long time. Then my idea of “future” started increasing to a week, a month, a couple of months and recently, I made plans ...

You know how when you stub your toe, somehow it becomes a magnet for impact? You haven't stubbed it for a couple years, but the moment you do, furniture starts leaping out at you and despite not having dropped anything in weeks, now you drop an apple and it lands on your toe and when you're in line at the bank, the person in front of you steps back right on - altogether now! - your toe. My neck and shoulders have been like that for well over five weeks now. The thing gets injured - or rather, my old permanent whiplash injury gets highly aggravated - and I sit still so for a while, get a shot of steroids/lidocaine and get better. The week after that one of my attendants accidentally whacks her elbow on my head as she is helping me take off a sweater (this has never happened before in the 13 years I've received attendant care where I'm living now) and everything seizes up again. I sit still, get a shot of lidocaine, sit still so more, feel better and the week after that, ...

I once developed a theory of how life works. In this theory, the universe is a cat and we are its toy. It makes perfect sense. You know how there are times where it feels that every time you try to get up, you get knocked down again? Am I the only one who thinks that’s exactly how a cat keeps batting away at a toy (or mouse) over and over again, patiently waiting between each swat until the "subject" starts twitching again? Until you just can't do it anymore and roll over, bear your throat (yes, I’m aware that’s for dogs, work with me) and whimper uncle . At this point, the universe/cat gets back up, an expression of "well, all you had to do was say you needed a break" and walks away to wash its face while you catch your breath. When you're back up again, this time with feet firmly planted on the ground, it comes back and meows in your face to play some more. And that is the Cat Toy Theory in a nutshell. I t all started a month a go when my D...