TMI

OK, so here is the deal. I have had cramps that feel like fucking labor contractions for the past THREE WEEKS. And I didn't know what it could be, but I suspected possibly a hernia (because I've been lifting weights and pulled something not too long ago) or an ectopic pregnancy. Because my mind immediately goes to the worst case scenario. And although I never go to the doctor, last week I caved and scheduled an appointment.

Then the pain started getting worse, to the point that I wanted to stab my ladyparts and carve out my uterus with a sawsall. Or, conversely, if it was a hernia, wanted to rip out my intestines and beat the everliving fuck out of them. So the pain, combined with my overactive imagination and general stress, gave me so much anxiety that I couldn't sleep. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and just lie there, thinking about all of the things I wanted to do before I died. Feeling my abdomen to make sure my intestines hadn't hardened up and died. Weighing the benefits of going to the ER vs. the cost of going to the ER.

So after too many sleepless nights, too much pain, and lying awake until 8AM when the walk-in clinic opened, I went to the doctor the day before my scheduled appointment. Victory: me, because I paid $160 at the clinic instead of $630 at the ER. I do feel good about that.

Unfortunately, the doc told me I have an ovarian cyst. There are NONE OF THE THINGS to do about it except possible surgery, unless I can get the motherfucker to go away before Monday. You best be believin' I'm doing everything short of literally punching myself in the ovaries to avoid surgery. Actually, I totally did punch myself in the ovaries. Because I am simultaneously that hardcore and frightened like a child that I may have to go under the knife.

I am going to make this motherfucker go away. One way or another.

Everything is Fine

I know, I missed another day.

It was a really bad day.

Tony is very sick. We are not quite sure how sick, but we know it is cancer sick. And it looks like it is all-through-his-body-and-on-all-of-his-organs cancer. But we will know for sure next week.

Last night we all got together to ignore it.

Me, Tony, Dust, and Gus

Reese's S'mores are Heaven

Answer to Prayer

It can't work that way, dear.
You can't make the call.
If you did, we'd be angels,
with a penchant for fall--
The time of the year
That ages with grace
The bright golden trees
and the lines on your face.

But winter will come
and it's just too cold, dear.
The lambs will out-spring us.
In summer, we'll wilt.
There's no fun in dragging
yourself through all that.

Besides,

If good things never came to an end,
we would never meet again.

Wild Thyme Unseen

For the Kindle Whisperer
 
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

---

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

excerpted from "East Coker" and "The Dry Salvages," the second and third of Eliot's Four Quartets

Rapture

So today was supposed to be the day we all got Raptured. Or left behind. Snatched up to heaven or doomed to suffer through the apocalypse.

Either no one I know made the cut, or it was as misguided as every other end-of-the-world prediction.

I would like to throw my hat in the ring with a prediction of the end coming in the year that some country launches a nuke on accident. It is basically bound to happen. And when it does, the world is over.

Unfortunately, I won't be around to accept any accolades. Although everyone in heaven will be all, "There she is! The chick who predicted the end." And they will buy me drinks for ETERNITY!