Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

Cast of Characters

Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
Almost Midwinter - December 14, 2011
Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


December 04, 2008

11:43 a.m.

Still Fall, but Rising

Ahhhh, I'm back, and what a hard day and night it was returning. Yikes. I'm feeling a lot better, though very tired.

We drove to near Cleveland on Monday to stay with some relatives of Carol's. I drove separately from my house so I didn't see my mates until destination. North Olmsted is about 9 hours' drive not including traffic, stops, or snowstorms. Did I say snowstorms? Oh, yes. I drove into a whiteout in Ohio -- it was dark by then and suddenly no one could see ANYTHING except driving snow coming into the windshield. Visibility about five feet. I pulled off soon at a rest stop and got some gas, and by the time I got back onto the Turnpike the snow had lessened and the plows had gone by. Still there was intermittent snow, rain, and clear weather the rest of the way. I arrived safely about half an hour after our scheduled dinner time (I'd told them not to wait dinner for me), shaking slightly from the strain.

And guess what dinner was! Could you guess turkey? I thought I'd finally had the last of the turkey for this season, but there it was. I ate it cheerfully.

Bed -- an airbed, not my favorite but I cushioned it with some quilts and had a reasonable sleep.

Carol's relatives are older -- upper 60s I think -- and they've been very active in the local theatre for many years. They told us about the play she's in right now, we got news about the kids, their son's wedding the week before and the reception at the house just before Thanksgiving... there is always much laughing at the table, and watching of cardinals at the bird feeder in the back yard. Barb is a little thing, looks kind of like Jiminy Cricket.

We got to sleep in a bit and I made some notes in the morning about good stuff I could post on eBay for sale. I have a small collection of my mother's pewter that she started buying in the late 60s -- I think much of it is from Germany -- and while it's not Antiques Roadshow stuff exactly, I've been thinking I should sell it to someone who wants to display it. It sits in a box in the basement. Then I started coming up with all kinds of neat stuff I own that I either don't use, don't display, or am just not attached to, and since every dollar is going to count, I might as well pass them along for a few bucks. I sat with a stuffed Moose puppet on my lap and made a long list.

Lunch -- guess what? Turkey soup!

Then it was time to go. 2-1/2 hours to Ann Arbor, and all afternoon I was plagued with the painful stomach ache that had been coming and going for several days. Not heartburn, just radiating pain. We got to the venue a little early and I closed my eyes in the car for half an hour or so. By then it was somewhat better.

We loaded in, in the very cold late afternoon. The Ark is a wonderful, very coveted room and though we'd played there several times, it was always as an opener. This was our first feature appearance. The sound is good, the stage is big enough, Carol gets to play a real piano. It was modestly attended. Carol later said we should have contacted a couple of our safe-house hosts that we know there (who came) and asked them to bring friends. We weren't as aggressive about getting people in this time. She felt she'd dropped the ball. I felt around inside, around my apathy over the whole process, and knew it hadn't been important enough to me to even think about numbers. Driving a couple thousand miles for $100 each wasn't something I was willing to get excited about, not at this stage. So, it was what it was; people came up to us with tears in their eyes asking for hugs and talking about their loved ones who had died and how we touched them and made their days and their lives better, and we were funny and the gig was very pleasant and we hardly sold a thing. So it goes. We slept on iffy beds at someone's house (they always make up this bottom bunk for me, which is saggy and spring-filled and awful, and this time I risked my life sleeping on the top bunk which was a better mattress, remaking it from the bottom bedding and knowing I'd have to climb down a precarious ladder to pee in the middle of the night. I also had to remove a swag lamp from the ceiling whose chain and wire draped right across where I'd have to enter the bed, blocking the way with dozens of origami cranes strung on the chain. It was even more rearranging than usual!) Our nice hosts had just redone their kitchen. It's spectacular. Then the economy crashed and they're living on their credit cards now. Very scary.

So a bit of sleep later, an early waking and much replacing of room decor and bedding to hide my covert sleeping activities. C&C left just before 7am, but I chose to head out just after 8, so I didn't see them. I ate breakfast and drove through the morning stomach ache. That subsided and then all I had to deal with was sore hips, aching knees, ergonomically wrong car seat, and boredom. I never found my Starbucks, but I did stop to walk quickly around a little mall somewhere in Ohio which was almost deserted. Like a ghost mall. There was a huge Christmas tree display at one end with a guy dressed as Santa, all ready for the kids to line up. It looked quite lonely with no customers. As I walked by, he said in a very convincingly Santa-like voice, "Ho, ho, ho! Hello there, little girl!" I turned and realized he was talking to me. I smiled and waved, and he asked me if I'd been good. I assured him I had been mostly good, and he said to keep up the good work. It was very funny. He must've been pretty bored! The display looked really excellent, big and sparkly. Granted it was a Wednesday during the day, but I wondered if the Santa gig in general was going to be well attended this year. There's something very sad about a dressed up Santa sitting all by himself in his chair. I pictured various adult type people sitting in turns on his lap -- mall employees, maybe, the janitor, the security guys. Might as well do some business, right?

********

By late afternoon I was pretty crazy, of course. I'd listened to all the CDs I brought, and lemme tellya, Ohio and Pennsylvania are VERY big on the Christian and the Country radio stations. I'd put it on Scan and just leave it there. I am not ready to hear Christmas music yet either, despite the early installation of Sparkly Tree. I tried to play the Alphabet Game -- thinking of, say, something blue that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Blue was hard. Yellow was easier. I stopped to pee, I filled the car with gas again and again. I called Dar. He insisted that I arrange for medical tests for my GI tract. He said, "Don't worry about the cost. Just do it and I'll take care of it. This has gone far enough." I called Rose and told her about the stomach aches. She said, "Well, you know, you might have a bacteria." Now Catsoul just left me a comment along the same lines so this was nudge #2 about bacteria. Yes, she said, they can cause ulcers and it might even account for all the misery I've experienced since the summer. She said she would call her gut doctor to see what could be arranged regarding an endoscopy and a colonoscopy.

Best of all, I learned, one is blissfully asleep during these procedures. Suddenly it became a lot more attractive.

So by today she's spoken with him, and he's agreed to see me for free and to waive his fee from the hospital. He will also see if the cost of the procedure can be whacked down a bit. I have to call him when they're back from lunch today and make the consultation appointment.

I felt heaps better after all that, and called Dar again to tell him. "And they'll put me out!" I said. He suggested that, since I'm out, they should clean my teeth, sharpen my incisors, clip my nails and whiskers and unkink my tail.

********

And I drove and drove. A traffic jam near Waterbury owing to construction put me back another 25 minutes or so. I was going, "Aaaaaaaaaaah! AAAAAAAAAAAH!" loudly in the car. Everything I ate sat in my gut like wet cement. I'd find Aretha Franklin or the Supremes on the radio and bop a little until the station fizzled out. I listed to lots of NPR. A headache developed over the last few hours, which escalated after I got home. By the time I went to bed my head was in a vise and I could hardly see. At 3:30 I awoke with it even worse, so I took 2 Aleve with soy milk and went back to bed. It was mostly better by the time I got up, thank goodness. I haven't eaten yet, but I had some half-caf coffee which I thought might take care of the whisper that's left, and my stomach feels fine right now.

********

I might start working on something tomorrow; Marc texted me about some part-time surface assembly work at his place of employment, so I called him when I got home last night and said I was available after my recovery day (today). He's looking into what forms I have to fill out to be legal, and soon I'll go in and start putting little electronic parts together. He said something about a flea circus, that small. Cool. I'll get eBay advice from him about all my stuff, too. Maybe I won't go broke this month. I'm hopeful.

So that was my trying trip to Michigan! I survived! I have a hunch about snow this year, so I want to get my snow tires on very soon, get the oil changed (I turned over the 100,000 mile mark this week) (yes, I've had the oil changed before; I don't mean to imply that I only change it every 100,000 miles) and maybe some other pre-emptive maintenance things done. I am still alive, I still have my family and some hope of getting through this hard time, healthy, inspired and, one day, solvent.


|

previous - next


free hit counter

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!