Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Pain

"Pain is a warning that something's wrong, 
I pray to God that it won't be long....
do you wanna go higher?"
Madonna, The Power of Good-bye

Yes, there is pain. And yes, it is not quite summer.
But I sit, in denial of it all, iPad on a pillow, banging away these little minnows of entries, my whole computer world shrunken.  My little keyboard. The tiny screen. This dwarfen blog.
I'm sorry.
It is what it is.

Boss 1 left Friday, no, the door did not hit her on the way out, no, I did not attend her good-bye party at her house, yes, the kind email she sent me on the day before her departure took me by a whack of a surprise.
Coworker 2 leaves in less than 3 weeks.
Yes, I know. How does one respond to all the "decamping". Well, turns out the key is NOT to respond. Because it's then that you start to rise above.
Let me be frank. My last few long months of work have lacked even basic decency and civility to certain...persons. Evasion is the name of the game. Someone is talking right to you, someone is reacting in a meeting, someone is screaming.
I am a duck. Rolls..off my back.

I stay awake from the festive, gossipy atmosphere.
I read my dull library books. I gather information. I suppose the rest.  I read about goose bumps, also known as "truth bumps".  I bump into them again and again.

In between there is pain. It has flared up again, reminding me I am NOT in charge of my life, or anything.
I met a pain specialist, a pain researcher, at a party. How amazing would it be to have that as your job description.  Everyone was clamouring to talk to him.  For one, he was European. He could tell us Canadians what we just could not know about pain.
We talked about headaches, I gave him my supposings, he gave me a suppressed grin behind a glass of beer and said, haltingly, that nothing would show up in the new tests.
"Why?", I asked, thoroughly surprised.
Because it's all in my head.
No, really, it is.
I'll talk more about that in Pain, Part 2, but right now I have to put myself to bed.
I've been up since 4 am, worked all day.
And as excited as I am that I can type madly on this little child-sized computer the way I want to,
what I really want right now is sleep.
And a day off.
I'll get something, anyway.












Sunday, June 2, 2013

Summer

http://www.juliaipsa.com/
I'ts tantalizingly close, this thing called Summer.
My friend Julia's post (link on over up top) brought me down memory lane--I too bought cigarettes for my parents at our corner store before the laws of the day put a stop to that.

I ran yesterday.
It turned into a walk as head pain halted my increasingly difficult pace, the heat making my heart literally hammer in my chest.
So once again, halfway into a 10 k I was facing a nice long walk home.
But for once, I didn't mind it.
Because, it's almost summer.
The season that I feel no one appreciates more than us north-bound Canadians.
People were everywhere as I wandered down Broadview yesterday.
Yard work was happening along Queen Street.  The scent of fresh earth, grass and flowers being planted.
Burgers were being charcoal-grilled outside.  I was back to my childhood weekends at Kew Beach, my parent's Hibachi, our hot-dog-and-hamburger-lunches on a picnic blanket on the sand, our cooler stuffed with pop for us, beer for our dad.  Sandcastles.  Bathing suits that were perpetually damp.

I just drank it all in.
I didn't hurry on my long walk home.

Not really going anywhere with this as I sit on a Sunday morning.
Another run awaits, and the weather is weird.


Happy Sunday!