Wellness.....is that what irony is called?

Now that I am on the road to recovery (and Tim, of course, is sick and cannot move off the couch) I have no choice but to jump back into my life with both feet.  Well, of course I have the choice, but I never give myself the "opt-out" option.  It's full-steam ahead!  Any temporary enlightenment gleaned from 24 hours of rest has flown out the window.  It's a brand-new day, let's cram it full of activities!


But the reality is:  it is raining, I am home with two small children and a sick man, we need groceries, and I have a storytelling project due this weekend.  I started the day standing on my neighbor's doorstep in my pajamas (thankfully we are the kind of friends that can be braless and unshowered in front of each other at 9am) begging to borrow some milk so I can make a cup of tea.  The day's main objective (besides keep everyone alive and my sanity intact)?  Tell a personal story to an audience, with props if possible, and record it live and post it to YouTube.


To recap: this was a difficult week.  I started a new job at the College of Craft and Design, Tim (who is in the military) was out in the field and everyone came down with the flu. 


It was raining all day here and the kids were wired from being stuck in the house, so my youngest was running around screaming while Benji and I were trying to set up the props and tell the story without interruptions.  I would give him stage directions and walk him through, but he would seem to forget half-way and get lost playing with the horse's saddle or just stare off into space and we'd have to start all over again.  We ended up cutting the story from the original 7 minutes down to about 4, just so he wouldn't get bored and distracted.  I figured if my prop man was bored, so was my audience!  As we tried recording, Oliver would run in front of the camera to see himself.  Then I would get way too frustrated to be an "engaging storyteller" (more like an exhausted control freak).  We had technical difficulties with our sound either not matching up, or not working at all!  By the time we did the last take, it was way past bedtime, which is why Ben was in his pjs and looks so tired.  I didn't even bother showering, putting on makeup, or doing anything with my hair.  My final words before the camera started rolling were something along the lines of:
"Tim! Take this insomniac hell spawn (my darling Oliver) into the hallway for five god damn minutes so I can get this bloody thing over with and everyone can go to bed!  PLEASE!  I know you are sick, but please do this for me so I don't go insane!  I have to get this done!"
That, my friends, is what a good mother who doesn't drink and makes all her meals from scratch and doesn't let her kids watch TV all day sounds like after 18 hours of being cooped up in a condo with deadlines approaching.  I use the term "good mother" loosely.  Feel free to fill it in with your own, more colorful, adjectives. 

The reason I told this personal story is because everyone can relate to a time when they wanted something to happen so bad that they would do anything to make it come true, even if it wasn't a very sensible decision.  Now that I think about it, that probably applies to 75% of my life so far!  Also, my son Benji has a difficult time with making mistakes and getting up and trying again, so I thought it would be a good story for him to absorb and be a part of.  The reason we chose to tell it with the props we did is because we just happen to have a lot of horse-related toys (some leftover from my childhood and some of them belonging to Benji and Oliver).  It was Ben's idea to wear the riding helmet (which actually belongs to Tim from his childhood horseback riding days) and Ben was insistent that he stand behind a table because he wanted it to be a bit like a puppet show.  And that yellow 4th place ribbon is an actual ribbon I won that day (all the rest of them were 6th place!).  Yes, I was THAT terrible at horseback riding.  I still am!  I've saved that ribbon all these years and it is now part of my children's dress-up basket, which you can see behind me in the corner of our play room. 


My mum, I'm sure, will tell a much different version of the story where I'm much less heroic/stoic but she's getting old and pretty soon I'll be able to beat her in an arm wrestle.  Who am I kidding?  That's never going to happen.  But I'm not sure if she can work "the YouTube" so I may have technologically arm wrestled myself to victory this time!  Plus, we gave her the flu!  Happy Mother's Day!  Love you!  xoxoxoxoxox

Spring cleaning

Our house this week has been ransacked by THE FLU.  First Oli got it on the weekend, then Benji, and now me and my poor mother who was visiting to help with the kids while Tim was in the field.   The worst part of being sick, besides the actual vomiting and fatigue and body pain and whatnot, is the total helplessness I feel.  I am used to being a highly competent person.  I get shit done.  Usually while thinking about how I'm going to get other shit done.  If I can cram 50 hours worth of stuff into a 24 hour period I feel like it has been a good day.  So spending 30+ hours completely flat on my back and not being able to doing anything other than breathe and whine and be sick is torture for me.  The irony that sitting still is what I teach in my yoga and meditation classes is not lost here, friends.
 


But I have had a lot of time to fret over think about all the things I'm not doing: I'm not going to work at my new job where surely they must think I have the world's worst work ethic to call in sick my first week.  I'm not outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine.  I'm not cooking or cleaning or organizing or even eating, which let's face it, takes up a lot of my day.  I'm not running or swimming or walking or lifting weights (don't laugh, I try, I'm terrible at it).  I'm not playing with my kids.  I tried but Oli jumped on my belly and that was the end of that.  I'm not making anything, not being productive, not using my creativity or hands to do anything other than rub my tummy while I moan.  I'm not reading.  I'm getting behind on my school work.  My plants are all wilty but I don't have the energy to water them.  I need a bath, my hair probably smells like puke.  I can't seem to stay awake for more than an hour at a time.  I never sleep, especially in the middle of the day.  Sleep is for lazy people, you see, and I pride myself on being anything but lazy.  I wear my workaholism like a badge of honor.




Ahhh.  Here lies the real issue.  Not that I'm sick.  But that I won't allow my body to be sick.  My damn ego wants to convince the rest of me (and anyone else who will listen) that I am just way too important to be out of commission.  The world, you seen, needs me.  Never mind that the kids pretty much put themselves to bed (with some needling on my part), that Tim (who is now home) is completely preoccupied playing his video game, that work probably barely registered I wasn't there, that absolutely nothing happened because I stopped DOING.  Nobody cares that I have the flu except me.  And I don't mean that in a self-pitying "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I'll eat some worms" kinda way.  But the reality is: death is coming.  Some people try to ward it off by staying young-looking and fit and getting plastic surgery or never having kids or never growing up.  I ward it off by running around and around and around and around until a day like today shows up and says, "Hi, it's me, your old friend Mortality.  How much you getting done now, Sunshine?"



It's a gift really, a day like this, when you have a pounding headache and water sloshes around in your acid-filled tummy and everything hurts.  It reminds you that you are enough, just you, not your accomplishments, not your accolades, not the you who everybody thinks you are or should be.  But you, in your soggy, sweaty pajamas, with your puke-hair and your migraine and your terrible breath.  The you underneath all that clutter of expectations that wants to get better, that wants to live, that wants to go back to running around and forgetting how important it is to wake up to being here.  Because this is mediation folks: the in breath and the out.  The waking up and falling asleep.  The coming home and the wandering far far away. 




On that note, it is time for a nap.