The past month has gone by without a moment to post anything here. One reason is that I am trying (although not necessarily succeeding) to focus on other writing.
I was enrolled in a class on plot structure at the Richard Hugo House, Seattle’s non-profit writing center. When I signed up, I thought it would jump-start my fiction writing, which has been slowly cooking on back burners over the past year. Unfortunately the class went by mostly while I was in the MALM-induced limbo. The apartment was a wreck, and I had nowhere to sit down and write. (I still enjoyed the reading assignments and getting feedback on a story I’d written months before.)
Only in my last week of class did I get the bedroom rearranged with my old excuse for a dresser and the fabulous new writing desk. I’ve had a few good days writing there, now that the class is over.
Meanwhile Ghusun decided she wanted to buy the MALM from me, at the bargain rate of $70. This thing was a tar baby to the very end. Ghusun loaded the drawers into her VW beetle, but we couldn’t get the frame to fit into my car or the Poet’s. (She and I discovered this only after we had carried it down two flights of stairs and had it sitting out on the sidewalk. It was a sunny day, but since we live in Seattle we were convinced that it would start to rain on the MALM at any minute.) The Poet jumped into the chaos on his lunch break to help get the thing back inside, then a few days later drove it over to Ghusun’s condo, by what he and Ghusun called “the Arab method”: seventy-five percent of it sticking out of his car trunk, the whole arrangement tied together by an extension cord in lieu of rope.
When my prescriptions came up for renewal, two of my main medications, preservative-free Heparin and Rocephin, were temporarily unavailable from the manufacturer. I spent most of a week’s free time scrambling around getting my Rocephin from a different pharmacy, and then ordering the blood-thinner Lovenox from Canada, as a substitute for Heparin. Even at Canadian bargain rates Lovenox is about $650 a month, whereas the equivalent amount of Heparin bought in the U.S. is $250. My insurance covers the Lovenox, but it won’t cover the Heparin. Go figure!
Once I was over the stress of wondering whether I would have any medicine, David arrived for Thanksgiving week. Since the Poet had to work, I ran Camp Naomi for the first three days. David is almost nine years old and arrived still not knowing how to ride a bike. (???!!!!) By the time he left I had him riding all over the place.
Throughout it all I’ve been going daily to the gym to work up a sweat on the stair climbing machine and the rowing machine. It boosts the immune system and makes me sleep soundly every night. Hooray for strength at long last! Hooray for exercise! This is the corner I’ve been waiting and waiting to turn… I didn’t know that by the time I’d got here, there would be yet other corners I’ve gotten myself on the wrong side of. It’s turning out to be more of a five tetrahedra compound I’m trying to get myself around.
My calf is starting to feel a little better, but now my low back is hurting. When will I dance again? It’s not clear.
Robyn, my physical therapist, says she thinks the two are related, and as we begin to clear up the tendonosis through myofascial release the back issues my calves/Achilles were compensating for are now coming to light. And so it goes on…
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