Spoiled by Choice, A Love Letter

I am sitting at the table in the back yard. The morning sunshine is warm on my neck. I came out here for the sunshine. I came out here for the clarity. I am sick. I have been a little sick for nearly two weeks. I have been a little more sick for five days. The children have atypical or walking pneumonia, as conferred by the sticky-sounding mycoplasma pneumoniae. It knocked them each out of school for two days. Sonar X10 probably should have slept a third day. They need the weekend. 

I hear birds and the trilling buzz of what I assume are bugs in the grass. I haven’t seen any frogs recently, but there could be frogs out there, I suppose. I hear cars, a few streets away. I think my neighbor is in her back yard too.

I should go to the doctor. I have a low fever. Again. I am fatigued. Partner is worried. He will be disappointed (but probably not surprised) if I don’t go. The only thing the doctor can provide that I am not already doing is antibiotics. I’m not sure I can even be seen today. I may have worried away the opportunity to be seen before Monday. 

I know that I have the stupid pneumonia too.

It is so perfect out here today. A barely stirring breeze counters the almost, but not quite too hot warmth of the sun on my arm. The grapefruits are hanging from the tree in front of me, yellow and dusky with a kiss of pink on some of their shoulders. 

I sit here and believe that this sunshine, this air, that juice inside the thick-to-bursting peel will heal me. Will put the kabash (a new favorite word of the Sonars since I taught it to them the other day) on the mycoplasma pneumoniae that has set up shop in my lungs, its formlessness both exposing it and protecting it from the attack of my body. 

My scientific brain tells me that I need the antibiotics. That I will heal faster, protect my body and my family, and return to strength sooner with them. That they are worth the wait in the dour, germy office (and the copayment and the pharmacy fee).

A stubborn irrationality has taken hold of me. A fierce rejection of what I should do, in spite of myself. 

It feels good to put words on paper. I know that they are flowing out, crowding the page with their insistence. I must live in Paradise. Where I have this luxury, to sit in the warming sun and the balmy breeze, and to choose willfully to reject the antibiotics that others seek with desperation in order to save lives. My life is certainly not at stake today in my stupid, irrational rejection of the trip to the doctor’s office. Will I ever stop being that spoiled brat?

There is a bee searching the grapefruit tree for blossoms that won’t be there for a few months yet. Not until after we pick those hundreds of juicy fruits. There is a ladybug crawling up a leaf. A fly is flitting over the table in front of me, wondering, perhaps, if I have any crumbs to drop.

The timer. Fifteen minutes of sunshine to make sure I am getting my vitamin D. But I think I will sit here a bit longer. The breeze and the bees have shaken the bushes beside me so that I can smell basil. 

The avocado tree has not grown taller for at least two years. But the pomegranate tree that nearly blew down in a summer storm, its roots tipped out of the swampy mud, is reaching up taller, stretching itself up into the seamless blue sky, straining against the ropes we used to tether it back into the ground. 

Mosquitos. In December. Can you believe it? How did I come to this garden with the buzzing chorus and the basil breeze, and the whiff of truck exhaust? What did I do to deserve this time in the sun, where I can reach down and rub my fingers along a chive so the oniony tang sticks to my fingers while I listen to the delivery guys curse the neighbor’s cargo and a mower cut the green December grass?

If I sit very still, I do not notice the tremulousness in my muscles. The fatigue in my body. I do notice the tightening of my lungs as the gas-powered trimmer chugs by on the other side of the back fence, leaving puffs of exhaust and fragments of grass and weeds to float by on my herby breeze. 

Please don’t wrinkle your brow and shake your head at me because I am happier here, on this bench that you built, next to these herbs that you planted, soaking up the medicine of our lives. 

Twitter subtracts from the blog

Shh.  I know.  I thought Twitter was stupid too.  But I don’t so much anymore.  It’s become an occasional diversion, and a useful tool for communication and information dissemination.  I like it.  I do.

But when I Twitter, I don’t blog.  

I also don’t blog when I’m doing a marathon writing event, which I was doing last month.  I’m happy to share that I finished my Script Frenzy script last month!  The Benevolent Society of Angry Misanthropes (working title), came in at a little over one-hundred pages, including the extensive dialogue that summarized the entire end in five pages.  

In other news, there has been craft.  Much craft, mostly sewing, with some knitting.  So, if I can’t manage to communicate in more than 140 characters, then perhaps I can at least share some photos.  You can have that to look forward to.  

Oh, and in spite of the stuffy head and mild fever I’ve suffered the last week, we don’t have flu.  Bovine, ovine, or porcine.  And we won’t have to suffer through a flu-cation from school.  Or as the Corpus Christi newspaper called it, Swine Break ‘09.  

The Christmas Post

I hope everyone has had some good cheer in the past few weeks, or that good cheer will be coming your way in the next few.  

We had a lovely Christmas, though the general level of enthusiasm (and consumption of spirits) was dampened by an uninvited guest.  RSV, for those who don’t know, is a nasty little bugger, and I would highly recommend that you avoid it if at all possible.  

There were many lovely presents all around, and, thanks to my father’s shredding machine and his mad packing skills, there was snow.  Paper snow.  In the living room.  Despite our best efforts at snow removal, it can still be found drifting and swirling in the corners and under the furniture.  The snow is likely to persist until June at least.  

The invited guests have all returned home.  Two of them absconded with all of our children, leaving Partner and I in our snowy house with our stuffy heads and more food than should be legally possible for two people to consume in a month.  For the next week we will try to figure out what to do with our temporarily-childless selves.  

No, don’t worry.  We’ll find something to do I’m sure.  At the very least, we will work up some masquerade costumes and some pastries for the New Year’s Eve party we’re attending next Wednesday.  Our first grown-up New Year’s Eve party for nearly ten years.  I’m dizzy with excitement.  Or perhaps that’s the cold medicine.  Either way it’s a strangely nice feeling.  

A photo of me from Sonar X4’s birthday just to show that I’m not yet as round as my matryoshka representation.  And yes, those are candles, Christmas lights, and a snow globe in the fireplace behind me.  I’m not sure why we have a fireplace because, trust me, you don’t want to light an actual wood-burning fire in the fireplace here, even on Christmas.  Not even for the atmosphere.  Which reminds me of a tiny rant about people here who want a fire in the fireplace so bad that they run their air conditioners to offset the heat produced.  But I’ll spare you that little bit of vitriol in honor of Christmas, and also in honor of not being rude to those of you who live someplace where a fire in the fireplace would not only be a lovely cozy thing but also a necessarily heat-producing thing.  

Now, I’m off to begin fulfilling my agenda, which begins with an important item:  hibernate until virus leaves.  

The December 23rd Post

I know.  Too many posts on one day.  Why not just make one big post and be done with it.  Because it’s my blog and I’ll do it how I want to.  Besides, I’ve been sick in a house full of people for days and I’m feeling just a little silly and gratuitous in the sudden quiet.  

And because a serious face would be neither possible nor desirable:

It Happened in the Night

I imagined a post explaining in gory detail the germs that have swept through our house the past week and a half, but decided against it.  I was going to tell you about projectile vomit (times five) in the middle of four separate nights (Can someone give me some sort of scientific-type explanation for why vomitous episodes begin during deep sleep?), in places like a kindergarten classroom, the middle of three different beds, the hallway, the walls, the old chair in the middle bedroom.  About 50 loads of laundry.  About eating nothing but jello and toast for four days.  

But I decided you might not want to hear about that.  

So instead I’ll show you some knitting I finished.  I’ve been inching ahead on three different projects for such a long time that I despaired ever finishing anything.  But lo, here is one finished object to behold.  

This is BYOB from Knitty Summer ‘08, made with Lily Sugar ‘n Cream in Milk Chocolate, Creme Brulee, and Blueberry Pie (these cutesy names do not give any sense of the actual color of the yarn, but it’s a workhorse of a cotton yarn that I like for functional items that might see a fair bit of washing).  It’s a nice easy, lacy stitch there on the sides to create those stretchy mesh panels, so if you can get over knitting acres of seed stitch on the bottom and edges, it’s a nice introduction to a simple repeated lace pattern.  The only fussy part was evenly picking up the right number of stitches around the edge of the bag bottom in order to knit the sides.  It’s a rather large, very functional grocery bag, wider than it is tall, but I suspect it will stretch vertically when loaded with goods.  It will be gifted next week, perhaps loaded with a nice box of fancy tea.  

There is a good chance that I’ll also finish Sonar X3’s Hogwart’s socks today or tomorrow as well.  Which will leave only the Mystery Stole.  I have finished three clues on one end of it and one clue on the other end.  I have all six clues in hand now (five are knit twice, one is knit once in the center), so it’s just a matter of knitting my way through them.  (Which should be much easier now that I can sit upright for more than a few minutes without fear of fainting.)  I’m really enjoying this shawl.  The very fine lacy knitting is so delicate and lovely, which is funny, because fussy sorts of things don’t usually appeal to me.  Still, I think it will be rather pretty when it’s finished.