Charley just looked at me and licked his chops. Hopefully this does not mean he has finally realized I am a kind of animal, and therefore potential food. That would set the world in disorder pretty quickly.
I never write a blog entry when it is sunny outside. That is why moving to the Pacific Northwest has been a good move for my writing. I actually look forward to the long days of rain and the wood stove purring and nothing to do but reading and writing (in between all the other chaotic things I do to keep the house and kids from ruin). It sounds terribly romantic but it doesn't feel especially romantic most of the time. Writing feels like work, albeit work that I like and feel privileged to do, and it never feels as if I have enough time to finish what I need to finish, and I make a mere pittance and sometimes I feel lonely because I have no colleagues to spend the day with. But it is good nonetheless.
Lately I have bustled everyone off to school and work, cleaned the kitchen and other well-trodden places, then I make myself a cup of tea and go to work. I read for a while and then I write for a while. Then I get up and do fifty jumping jacks followed by fifty hoppy things and then I run up and down stairs doing laundry. Back to work, up again for lunch. Back to work, up again for a fast walk with Charley, about a mile or so, then the kids start coming home.
My routine shatters if I have appointments or meetings. This morning, I woke early and packed off to the dentist, where Doctor Pickle (close to his real name but not exactly) shot me fuller than novocaine than I have ever been in my life. My entire bottom jaw was numb, but what rendered me much altered for four or so hours was my lifeless tongue and lips. I never realized how dependent I am on my tongue. I could not articulate words properly, so when I asked Dr. Pickle if he had read the wonderful book, Dr. Desoto, I said, "Hab oo wed Docta Desodo?" He had not, and said he would write it down, but there's no chance he heard the correct title. I'll have to get a copy for him. I like him. He is gentle and unassuming and wears cool orange shoes.
The assistant kept telling me to shut my mouth so she could use the sucker but she actually had to pinch my lips shut for me. I kept saying, "Id feels so stwange!" At one point (I think it was the amount of novoaine), a ridiculously inspirational song came on and I imagined myself jumping up on the chair and throwing my arms wide before floating up to the top of the ceiling. Instead, I opened up a little wider.
In the middle of the procedures, when my mouth was so stuffed with cotton I could barely swallow, and my jaw felt as if it were no longer connected to my face, Dr. Pickle and assistant turned off the whiny and grindy and poppy instruments just long enough that I could hear One Voice by the Wailin' Jennys. Suddenly I floated away to a wonderfully happy place with all my dear friends--warm days, hot tea, bare feet--and then I was back to the symphony of dentistry again. "Disassociate," I kept reminding myself, and after an hour, it was really easy. I got all kinds of thinking done, but it was not productive thinking except for the fact that time passed quickly and I got to vaguely visit several very nice places in my mind, including the coast of Kenya.
After I was done and my drool all mopped up, I did not speak to anyone for three or four hours, not even Charley, and if you know me, that is akin to a miracle. I looked in my rear view mirror and smiled experimentally to see how I could look friendly with no feeling in half of my face and then stopped by Safeway on the way home, where I gave everyone I passed fleeting half-smiles and completed the self-check. Mashed potatoes followed by ibuprofen and tea through a straw prepared me for a quick nap before I drove off to pick up Merry and her friends. Now we are all sipping the most delicious, delicate tea (without straws)--Dilmah, which my mother brought back from Myanmar. And this is the only writing I've accomplished all day. So there you are. There is surprisingly little consistency to life and routines, don't you agree? A little thing happens, like your tongue goes numb, and the world tilts a little oddly for a day.
Or your dog starts vomiting, or your kid falls behind in Math, or your husband's car gets rear-ended, or in the case of my brother-in-law, the whole car flips into a ditch (he's okay). These are all relatively small things and for that, I am so grateful. It is when something really big happens--a marriage splits, someone dies, someone almost dies, someone becomes terribly sick, someone loses a a job--that the whole world really tilts and then you are never the same afterward. We've had enough of those major shifts over the last three or four years that the minor wobbles don't upset me like they once might have. In fact, there is humor to almost everything (absolutely in the case of my dentist appointment this morning), and routines are made to be disrupted and remind us that life is not quite in our control but everything good is a gift and should be treasured.
Now I am going to sip my Dilmah tea before it grows cold, and I may even get in a little reading before Bea arrives home. But first a fire in the wood stove!
I never write a blog entry when it is sunny outside. That is why moving to the Pacific Northwest has been a good move for my writing. I actually look forward to the long days of rain and the wood stove purring and nothing to do but reading and writing (in between all the other chaotic things I do to keep the house and kids from ruin). It sounds terribly romantic but it doesn't feel especially romantic most of the time. Writing feels like work, albeit work that I like and feel privileged to do, and it never feels as if I have enough time to finish what I need to finish, and I make a mere pittance and sometimes I feel lonely because I have no colleagues to spend the day with. But it is good nonetheless.
Lately I have bustled everyone off to school and work, cleaned the kitchen and other well-trodden places, then I make myself a cup of tea and go to work. I read for a while and then I write for a while. Then I get up and do fifty jumping jacks followed by fifty hoppy things and then I run up and down stairs doing laundry. Back to work, up again for lunch. Back to work, up again for a fast walk with Charley, about a mile or so, then the kids start coming home.
My routine shatters if I have appointments or meetings. This morning, I woke early and packed off to the dentist, where Doctor Pickle (close to his real name but not exactly) shot me fuller than novocaine than I have ever been in my life. My entire bottom jaw was numb, but what rendered me much altered for four or so hours was my lifeless tongue and lips. I never realized how dependent I am on my tongue. I could not articulate words properly, so when I asked Dr. Pickle if he had read the wonderful book, Dr. Desoto, I said, "Hab oo wed Docta Desodo?" He had not, and said he would write it down, but there's no chance he heard the correct title. I'll have to get a copy for him. I like him. He is gentle and unassuming and wears cool orange shoes.
The assistant kept telling me to shut my mouth so she could use the sucker but she actually had to pinch my lips shut for me. I kept saying, "Id feels so stwange!" At one point (I think it was the amount of novoaine), a ridiculously inspirational song came on and I imagined myself jumping up on the chair and throwing my arms wide before floating up to the top of the ceiling. Instead, I opened up a little wider.
In the middle of the procedures, when my mouth was so stuffed with cotton I could barely swallow, and my jaw felt as if it were no longer connected to my face, Dr. Pickle and assistant turned off the whiny and grindy and poppy instruments just long enough that I could hear One Voice by the Wailin' Jennys. Suddenly I floated away to a wonderfully happy place with all my dear friends--warm days, hot tea, bare feet--and then I was back to the symphony of dentistry again. "Disassociate," I kept reminding myself, and after an hour, it was really easy. I got all kinds of thinking done, but it was not productive thinking except for the fact that time passed quickly and I got to vaguely visit several very nice places in my mind, including the coast of Kenya.
After I was done and my drool all mopped up, I did not speak to anyone for three or four hours, not even Charley, and if you know me, that is akin to a miracle. I looked in my rear view mirror and smiled experimentally to see how I could look friendly with no feeling in half of my face and then stopped by Safeway on the way home, where I gave everyone I passed fleeting half-smiles and completed the self-check. Mashed potatoes followed by ibuprofen and tea through a straw prepared me for a quick nap before I drove off to pick up Merry and her friends. Now we are all sipping the most delicious, delicate tea (without straws)--Dilmah, which my mother brought back from Myanmar. And this is the only writing I've accomplished all day. So there you are. There is surprisingly little consistency to life and routines, don't you agree? A little thing happens, like your tongue goes numb, and the world tilts a little oddly for a day.
Or your dog starts vomiting, or your kid falls behind in Math, or your husband's car gets rear-ended, or in the case of my brother-in-law, the whole car flips into a ditch (he's okay). These are all relatively small things and for that, I am so grateful. It is when something really big happens--a marriage splits, someone dies, someone almost dies, someone becomes terribly sick, someone loses a a job--that the whole world really tilts and then you are never the same afterward. We've had enough of those major shifts over the last three or four years that the minor wobbles don't upset me like they once might have. In fact, there is humor to almost everything (absolutely in the case of my dentist appointment this morning), and routines are made to be disrupted and remind us that life is not quite in our control but everything good is a gift and should be treasured.
Now I am going to sip my Dilmah tea before it grows cold, and I may even get in a little reading before Bea arrives home. But first a fire in the wood stove!
Comments