catching you up….an update from 3 weeks ago so I can post today’s post SOON

I’ve been drafting posts. Drafting, drafting. Deleting. Saving. Ignoring. Bored, boring.

Before I can post today’s post, I have to go back a few weeks and fill you in on my life. You think keeping up with your own life is hard? this is what it takes to keep up with mine. Some of these details were filled in in this post and this post. I’m scattershot. I’m restless. I have no confidence in myself as a blogger any more. This is why

[Wednesday, August 15]: I re-injured my rib last Thursday morning [August 9], leaning over from the driver’s seat to the floor of the passenger side, putting pressure on the arm rest with my lower front -side ribs. OUCH!

It didn’t hurt terribly until Saturday [Aug 11] but with the help of rather constant ibuprofin, salt baths, and ice, I managed to do most of whatever I needed to do.

Tuesday [Aug 14], we went to pick up Violet at her friend’s house, only 40 minutes from the beach, so we thought, why not hit Crane for a couple of hours? I was fine at the beach, fine in the 60 degree water, sort of able to fall backwards and do an itty-bitty back frog- stroke and an itty-bitty breast stroke (no real backstroke or crawl, though reaching my right arm overhead on land seems quite comfortable).

Just as we were packing up, I did something to the right side. Something horrible. Something startling and painful, deep-in-the-gut, take-your-breath-away painful. Each of my hands started to go numb and my head got light and fuzzy. I thought I was going to throw up or pass out or both.

We skipped dinner and grabbed Violet from her friend’s. I complained and freaked. I alternated between not feeling any pain to being filled with crazy fear. I inhibited, I om shanti‘ed, I centered myself, I thought my best Alexander thinking.

I decided I needed to go to the ER.

We went to Emerson Hospital on Rte 2, right outside of Concord and near Walden Pond. How can you go wrong with a hospital named after Ralph Waldo? I must be the luckiest busted-rib girl in Massachusetts. That and the doctor was good-lookin’. But there were no female doctors, so eff that.

Though taping or binding ribs in cases of fracture is no longer recommended, I fortunately ran into my PT friend this week [Aug 16] and she said she will put some of that kinesio tape (like the OLYMPIANS!!!) on me tomorrow night. Not in fuscia to match my hair, but hey, I’ll take skin tone if it means I can start moving more….please please please let me bike and hike and yoga soon.

Here’s a photo recap of last Thursday’s Gogol trip:

common sight on I-91 and/or I-89 in VT

Me and secret kid in back seat (note fuschia hair, hint hint kinesio tape designers)

Gogol show was rain delayed and by the time they played, there was only an hour and a quarter before they were kicked off stage, 10 pm curfew!!!! CRAPPY and not a great show. No encore. I was in the front “row” most of the time, grabbing my side lest someone should slam into me. I found 2 women at the show who had read one of my older Gogol posts but I did not find The Wanderlust Queen.

Next morning, we ate at one of the coolest restaurants in Burlington. Look what was in a couple of the tables upstairs:

Yeah. I know you don’t believe it. You know how I feel about rocks.

*

FIN

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I tell my sorrow to the stones (William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus)

When we were in Truro a couple of weeks ago, on one of my trips down to the beach, I began to dig in the sand at what promised to be a beautiful, black, smooth rock. The kind you find on the shore all over the beaches of New England. I love these smoothed-out ocean rocks and bring some home on every trip. I love all sorts of rocks, really, and with too many to count to choose from the practice is one of seeing, choosing, letting go, non-doing, randomness, and contemplation.

I am part of a larger whole, I am smaller than nature, I am one with nature, I am part of nature, I am perfect, I am beautiful, I am imperfect, I am flawed, where I am is by chance, who finds me, who finds me beautiful, who holds me. I am subject to forces beyond my control.

I dug the smooth black rock out of the sand. As I walked and held it, rolling it around, moving it from my right to left hand and back again, my palms began to turn an orange-y rust color. AHA! This was not a rock, but some sort of iron ore or a shot. The strange thing is, it does not smell like iron and only a slight undertone of rust is visible in it.

I have looked up iron ore on google images, and what I’ve found is definitely rust-colored and not uniform in shape.

I looked up images for cannonball and for the most part, what I found there is much rounder than what I’ve got.

My mother, who grew up during WWII in Nazi Germany with a violent, drunken father, is often in a state of high alert. As she advances in age, I notice that this state of fear is harder and harder for her to recognize and to release herself from. Still, when I spoke with her on the phone yesterday and she said I was really afraid, I knew she had more legitimate cause than usual.

My brother lives in a suburb of Denver and has been to the movie theater where the shootings occurred. I did not for a minute think that Dan was anywhere near the theater the night of the rampage. He is planning a trip to China right now, packing up many belongings for long-term storage. He is cautious with his time, he does not go to many movies. He is not the type to go to a late-night screening of the latest block-buster.

I know you are in a state of bewilderment, same as I am. I know you know that mentally ill people should not have access to guns. I know you love your family and your fellows.

I know you know about human nature and you know that I know, too.

I know we are all in a state of grief even though our lives go on and that we need to stick to the tasks at hand.

Good grief, people. I hope none of you lost someone in Colorado.

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