Peter & Angela

My back is officially screwed up.

As are my feet.

I’ve been going to at least one doctor (sometimes more) every day for almost three weeks now.

Not even the least bit fun.

And I’m not done. I have my first appointment with a Physical Therapist on Friday.

Let the torture begin.

I screwed up my left ankle severely in 1988 and they had to remove the ligaments. Thirteen months of physical therapy later, the muscles could do the job without the ligaments.

I remember what torture that was. I think it takes a closet sadist to be a physical therapist. And I was a little skinny girl of 20 then. Now I’m a fat old lady.

But the fresh torture lately is intravenous treatments with pain medicine and steroids and B12 and God knows what all is in that bag.

I’ve always taken shots well and had blood drawn and had IV bags hung for days and never had a problem. I have a wonderful, big, fat, blue vein running right inside my elbow that just begs to be tapped.

I’ve had to go to this treatment five times. Only once has there not been a problem. I don’t know why, but they don’t like to use my lovely big blue vein.

They always try my other arm, and cannot find a vein, which sends them down to the back of my hand and they thread it in a tiny one there and it hurt.

I’m being a big baby here, but I don’t care. I have a relatively high pain threshold. I can deal.

But it hurts!

The back of my hand was greenish grey for days from just having it in there twice.

I don’t know why they have such a hard time finding a vein. They have me pump my fist, they beat the hell out of my arm and my hand, and they still have to stick the needle in and fish for it.

Yesterday, I got the right chair or something, they were willing to go with the right arm. The big blue vein arm.

For the first time, since the first day, there were no problems.

Today was my last trement.

I sat in the same chair I sat in yesterday.

The dude came in and I pushed up my sleeve and stuck out my big, fat vein.

No problem. He was even gentle with it.

Half way through the bag, my blood started streaming out of the tube. I always bring a book to distract me, so I didn’t notice anything was wrong until the blood was rolling down my arm and puddling on the floor.

So, the nurse came and expressed surprise that it didn’t hurt and they took that one out and looked for another vein.

He checked my left arm and couldn’t get a vein anywhere.

He checked my right arm and decided that there was one right on my wrist bone, where that little bone juts out, under my thumb.

OWWW!!!

I actually almost cried.  Tears welled up in my eyes.

It was so close against that bone that I had to hold very still. If I moved the tiniest bit, it nudged the bone or it stretched out the skin, neither of which was bearable for long.

And it burned!

Oh how it burned!It must’ve been a tiny vein, because I could feel the liquid pumping into it, and it burned so much!

Sitting right there in that chair, I turned into the biggest baby in the world. I wanted my mama. I wanted my husband. I wanted to go home, or at least back to my husband’s office. I wanted out of there.

But, I had to stay and take it.  Sometimes, being an adult sucks.

Thankfully, after 40 more minutes the bottle was empty. Unfortunately, blood was streaming out of that hole too, by that time.

They said that I could come back and get five more treatments and asked if I wanted to do that.

I said no.

I happened to walk underneath a tree full of pigeons this afternoon.

No, I didn’t get pooped on. Thankfully.

They were all making their noises. Talking to each other, I guess.

But it gave me a sort of flashback, in a wierd way.

When a bunch of pigeons are all making their noises together, they sound like a swirl of hundreds of mumbled human conversations.

I’ve heard this before and it had nothing to do with pigeons.

Years ago, when I was younger, I was very creative. To the extreme.

I wrote songs. I was in a bit of a band. With a guy that had a foot fetish and huge crush on me. Neither of which, his wife was comfortable with.

He refused to allow any other people to play with us, insisting on recording every instrument himself.

I sang.

Which is a testament to the magnitude of his crush, I guess, because I am tone deaf and cannot sing. In fact I sound beyond bad. The sound of even my humming can make my husband want to vomit. It’s that bad.

But I could, and maybe still could, write amazing songs.

And when I was writing, I would kind of go into a “zone” and be buzzing for hours. Creativity can give a tremendous high.

When I was writing, and it was all coming together, it was almost like no thought was required, the words just came to me, flowing through my brain and into my pen.

I could (and did!) write some really amazing songs in 30 minutes flat.

And when that was happening, in my head would be that sound. The sound of hundreds of mumbled conversations swirling together.

Even when I was finished, that sound still swirled through my brain. Sometimes, it was hard to actually think around it.

I would be up for hours, days, 24, 36, 48 hours at a time. Never tired.

If I tried to get some sleep, that sound would keep me awake.

Thoughts of what I was working on would keep me awake.

I would sleep for a couple f hours and then hop up and go right back to it.

It all came to nought, of course.

Shortly after that, my creativity took a different turn. Drawing, painting, but mostly sculpting. And again, the noise would swirl through my head, and I became a slave to the creativity. Day and night, never tiring, exhilerated by what I was creating.

But it all came to nought. I gave everything I made to various family and friends and got tied up in the various things that life distracts us with.

A few years later, I got a computer and the internet and began to teach myself how to “write” a website. As in open Notepad and start typing in HTML. And the more I learned, the more buzzed I got.

I started hearing that noise again. And barely sleeping. And learning and working in a creative frenzy.

And then I began to learn graphics programs, and 3D rendering. And the noise was just always there. I was euphoric. Creativity can feel like euphoria.

Thankfully, the jobs I had during all of these times were the kinds where I really didn’t need to think, just do my job. And by the time I had learned the basics of HTML, I was working as a website designer, so it all fed into each other.

But then, I moved into a different job and it took all of my mental and physical energy to learn and develop my skills in that career. And the technology moved on, beyond the rudimentary skills I had developed.

Flash and Java and HTML went the way of the dinosaur. And I didn’t have the energy to keep up.

I never felt the euphoria again.

I never heard the noise again.

Until today.

From pigeons.

This is going to require some thought from me. I need to figure out why pigeons sound like creativity.

I still have not recovered my relationship with my kitchen. If you read my post about my being down in my back and Peter’s mother having to clean my kitchen, you will know why my kitchen and I are estranged.

I feel uncomfortable every time I step into it, even just to get a cup of coffee. And my weekend kitchen time did not pan out. My entire weekend kind of went to hell and ruined my life and all of that drama stuff.

I did NOT make the chutney that I planned on and have not, in fact, spent more than 15 minutes at a time in there since.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to reunite with my kitchen, or even cook. Everything I’ve made lately has been the heat it up or throw it in the pan and wait for it to finish cooking kind of thing.

Nothing that I cared about.

Nothing that I enjoyed.

Just doing what I had to do to feed us.

That’s what it feels like in my kitchen these days.

I’m not happy with it.

But it is how it is.

I think a permanent headache has settled over our household.

I don’t know.

I think there’s too much stress flying around everywhere.

It’s that or the Weather.

And honestly, the Weather is not that bad.

So, I may be quiet for a while, or I may bust out with a wild raving vent to the ether… or inter…

Either way, hopefully I’ll be cooking something worth showing off in the future and then you’ll definitely hear about it.